houston, we have a blog post
The destination today was the Kennedy Space Center, one of the places we’ve been really looking forward to. We plugged the address into the SatNav and were there in an hour and a half. The trip was well worth it; first stop was the merchandise shop where IrishWrath, IrishKing, and I all got NASA caps (although IrishCyborg appropriated my one within the first few minutes).
IrishCyborg looking the part…with my new hat
Next up we took were walked through a robot exhibit, then saw the older rockets in the ‘Rocket Garden’. We sat in on the Star Trek show, which was very corny but quite a lot of fun. There was short bus ride to the observation gallery about a mile from the two launch pads (where one shuttle was out being prepared for its next mission). The shuttle program is being retired this year, they told us that the last flight will be in June on an undisclosed (as yet) date. The next space program will aim to put humans back on the Moon and then on Mars, it will be based on a new rocket called the Orion class.
After
IrishWrath in the Rocket Garden…where they grow rockets
the bus tour we walked through a space shuttle replica with a mockup of the cockpit and cargo bay. We had a great day, it was well worth a visit, although some of our younger crew lost
IrishDoom in the shuttle replica cargo bay (payload: mischief)
their focus on the mission round about 3pm, meaning we aborted the shuttle launch simulation at the end of the day (the line was half an hour and no one was too pushed about it). I bought IrishCyborg a cap of his own on the way out so that I could retrieve my one. We drove home the long route to take in some shopping at another mall guided by our ever efficient SatNav Robot. The drive to Cape Canaveral (where the Kennedy Space Center is) was quite interesting too, it goes out over one of those really long bridges they have in Florida that seem to feature prominently in Bond movies.
In the Saturn V hangar