Kennedy Space Center

Apollo/ Saturn V rocket




We spent all day Wednesday at the Kennedy Space Center, after a fairly crappy night of sleeping. Next time through, we’ll pass on the Titusville Walmart parking lot as a boondocking site. Despite being parked way in the back, cars were in and out all night, the automated cart collectors were running all night, a street sweeper parking lot cleaner came through at some point in the middle of the night, and it was definitely not the best night’s sleep we’ve had since we’ve been on the road. Even without a good night’s sleep, we were our way to the Space Center and pulled into the parking lot at 8:30 am, a half hour before it even opened. We got the first RV parking spot in the huge lot – the first and probably the only time that will ever happen, although it turned out to be really convenient since we could come out for lunch to eat and take the dogs for a quick walk around the lot.

We spent the entire day at the Space Center, with some mixed impressions. Our first impression wasn’t good; the only thing open at 9:00 am was the Robot Scouts exhibit, which was hokey, to say the least. Maybe if we were three, or had a three-year-old with us, it would have been okay, but we walked out of that exhibit about 9:30 wondering if we’d just blown our combined $70 admission fee on a day of kiddie theme park crap. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case, and we boarded a bus for what turned out to be the real tour. Tourists aren’t allowed to drive or walk to the actual Space Center, where the real work is done, but busses leave every 15 minutes to drop visitors in controlled areas where they can really see what happens and appreciate the scale of the space program, both in scope of ambition and in the size of what we’re shooting into space. After paralleling the Crawler track – the two-lane gravel road (with a 7 foot base) over which the Crawler carries the assembled Space Shuttle to the launch site – the first stop is an observation platform in the middle of the complex, which covers a lot of square miles. The platform is 5 stories high, and each of the 4 sides have keys so you can see how much area the Space Center covers, and see all of the buildings that are part of the program. From there you’re bussed to the Apollo/Saturn V center, where a few movies about the program are shown, and you can wander around in the hanger that houses an entire Saturn V rocket, laid on its side but suspended above the floor. It’s amazing how huge the rocket that takes off from the launch pad is, and how tiny the actual space vehicles are – probably not even as big as our truck, and the LMs that actually put down on the moon look like toys. The next stop is the International Space Station Center, where you see a few more movies, then get to walk through where they’re assembling the payloads which the next few shuttles will carry up to the International Space Station. After catching a bus back to the Visitors’ Center, we saw a couple of really good IMAX movies, one about the Apollo program, and one about the International Space Station, which are interesting because they tie directly in to the bus stops. On the way out, we went to the Astronaut Hall of Fame, which is part of the complex, and learned more about the human side of the space program. They also have some “rides,” which are simulations of how it feels to be in space and on the space ships; Tom chose to see how it felt, but I passed because I didn’t want to end a good day by vomiting. We left the Hall of Fame at 6:30 pm, which was when it closed, after what seemed like a very quick day.


The "old" rockets - amazing they ever got anyone into space

Two other themes jumped out at both of us after the tour. The first is that the visitor program is basically a big marketing/promotional scheme which people pay to see. The movies and exhibits all stress the importance of space exploration to the future well-being of humanity, a sort of “We know this is costing you trillions of dollars, but you’ll be glad when you’re the one who gets cancer and we know how to cure it from things we studied in space” message. The other message, which I definitely think is a good message although I think they overdo it, is that all of the jobs and skills involved in the space program are things that women and minorities can do, and that young people should get their educations so they too can be astronauts or scientists when they grow up. It’s a good point, but if you evaluated the program from the movies and exhibits, you’d probably start to doubt that white men ever had anything to do with it.

The other thing the tour did was make Tom and me look at what we’ve done in selling everything and heading off to Belize in a truck and camper, and put it in perspective when it’s juxtaposed with the US space program. It first struck us when we were watching a movie about the shuttle program, and the narrator said that beginning of the shuttle mission is not when it takes off from the launch pad, but when it lands at Cape Canaveral or Fort Edwards AFB after returning from space. The process starts when it’s picked up and returned to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), where a team goes over it to determine what needs to be fixed or replaced for its next mission. I whispered to Tom, “We need to get that team to take a look at our truck,” mostly as a joke, but it struck us that Aaron was our VAB team, and we already recognized that our moving process started way before our launch on November 20 with our house closing. We were then a little more interested as we listened to and saw how the Apollo missions had been prepared, and how NASA is currently preparing each shuttle mission, and it made us realize that preparing our truck and camper for what we needed to take to Belize is bush league – at least we’re not out in a completely inhospitable environment where we’ll die if we find out we forgot to pack something! On the other hand, we’re following a very similar process – we needed to take as little as possible, but everything we need both to get there and when we’re there has to be included. The other little fact that made us laugh was a blip in one of the movies that said that all of the astronauts have to be amateur plumbers and electricians. After our previous post about getting the camper fridge operational, you’re probably not surprised that Tom and I now both consider ourselves good candidates for the astronaut program since we can fix anything in our camper. How much more complicated could the International Space Station be?