"Space: The Final Frontier"

Today we had a chance to visit the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral - our main goal for our visit here to the Space Coast.  For your information, the two are not the same.  Kennedy Space Center is run by NASA and is primarily focused on civilian space flight.  Cape Canaveral is owned and controlled by the U.S. Air Force and, while the Air Force permits certain of its facilities to be used for civilian launches, the Cape is a military base and is subject to all of the security that one would expect of such a facility.

As we entered Kennedy Space Center, we were greeted by the Rocket Garden, where many of the rockets that launched astronauts are on display:

Another unexpected exhibit as we entered was a full-scale model of the new Orion capsule that NASA plans to use to take astronauts beyond the moon:

The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex is most reminiscent of Disney World.  We felt like we were in Tomorrowland or Epcot Center, and in some cases, it seemed that the deliberately retro decor was intended to remind visitors of Disney:

That was a real external fuel tank and pair of solid rocket boosters sitting outside the Atlantis Space Shuttle exhibit.  Kathy is taking their measure here:

When we got inside, one of the staff offered to take our photo in front of Space Shuttle Atlantis:

This is one of my favorite views because it shows the massive payload bay:

Kathy snapped this photo of David taking the controls of a shuttle:

The exhibit also boasted the Astrovan, an Airstream motor home that was modified for special use to drive the astronauts from their suit-up facility to the launchpad.  According to the display, it was a custom for the astronauts on a shuttle mission to play a card game.  The astronauts would not exit the van to board the shuttle until the mission commander had lost a game of cards:

After viewing the Atlantis exhibit, we worked our way over to the IMAX 3D movie on the International Space Station, but stopped to have our photo taken with an "astronaut."  This one (male or female, s/he would not tell us - in fact, s/he would not even speak) was a little perkier than perhaps the average astronaut:

The accompanying staff member suggested we take a selfie in the astronaut's helmet shield.  Great idea!

We made it over to the IMAX 3D movie on the International Space Station and thoroughly enjoyed it.  It was one of the most informative, visually interesting IMAX movies we've seen.  Sorry we can't show you more than the link above.

We purchased tickets to the "Then and Now" tour of Cape Canaveral, which gave us a chance to see the facilities associated with all of the manned space programs:  Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and the Shuttle program.  Here, in fact, we toured the mission control blockhouse for the launch of the Explorer satellite, our nation's answer to Sputnik.  This is a photo of the interior of the blockhouse, which sat less than a football field's length away from the launchpad:

The computer used to run the Explorer mission had a memory capacity of only 5 kilobytes - only a minor fraction of what each of us has available in our cell phones these days.  The computers used vacuum tubes and not transistors.  Memory consisted of numerous magnetic cores, which were magnetized for "1" and demagnetized for "0" to record the binary information necessary in computer operations.  When changes were required in the programming for the rockets, the 1's and 0's had to be switched by hand.  This gave rise to the geeky in-joke relating to NASA's shooting of the chimp into space:  "How do you launch a monkey?"  "One byte at a time."  I guess you had to be there to appreciate it.

We also toured the blockhouse used for launching Alan Sheppard's historic Mercury-Redstone flight into space.  Here, Kathy peers through the blastproof window at the Redstone rocket and model Mercury capsule sitting on the original launchpad:

The oldest structure on Cape Canaveral is the Cape Canaveral Lighthouse.  Because it is located on the military base, it's owned by the Air Force.  However, it is still operational and is managed by the U.S. Coast Guard:

One of the most touching stops on our tour was Launch Complex 34, where the ill-fated Apollo 1 crew was killed in a disastrous fire, and where the Apollo 7 put the U.S. back into its groove in its quest for the moon.

The launchpad structure seems a fitting memorial structure:

Memorial benches have been installed nearby to remember Astronauts Grissom, White and Chaffee. The most recent anniversary of the Apollo 1 disaster, which occured on January 27, 1967, was just held two days before our tour, and it was almost unbearable to see the single red roses left on the benches for each of the three astronauts:

As our bus took us back to the Kennedy Space Center from Cape Canaveral, we passed the HUGE, iconic Vehicle Assembly Building, which is 526 feet tall and covers 8 acres.  The interior volume of the building is so vast that it has its own weather, including rain clouds forming below the ceiling on very humid days.

The final stop on our visit was the Apollo/Saturn V Center, where we had a chance to see rare video about Apollo 11's historic moon landing, while sitting above the original consoles and facility where Mission Control ran the mission:

The Saturn V rocket is immense.  One of the rockets is displayed in the hangar and is so large that we couldn't get it into one photograph.  The best we could do was to show the tail and rocket thrusters in one photo --

-- and the top of the rocket in another:

The facility has the original Apollo 11 capsule, in exactly the condition it was in when it returned to Earth.  We could get close enough to touch it (if that were permitted), and it was fascinating to see the almost artistic discolorations on the capsule and heat shield that resulted from the immense heat generated on re-entry:

Having finished most of the tour, the two of us retired outside the Apollo/Saturn V facility to see the VIP bleachers, where important guests view launches across Banana River on Cape Canaveral:

One thing that is very clear from current tours is that the Kennedy Space Center facility is being retooled to integrate private, commercial space flight with NASA  efforts.  Several buildings have been sold to Boeing for its space ventures, and Space X has already reserved four NASA launch sites - and is building a fifth - for its planned launches.  Similarly, NASA and the Defense Department have outsourced some launch services.  United Launch Alliance (ULA) is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing. ULA was formed in December 2006 by combining the teams at these companies which provide spacecraft launch services to the government of the United States. U.S. government launch customers include both the Department of Defense and NASA, as well as other organizations.  ULA provides launch services using three expendable launch systems – Delta II, Delta IV and Atlas V. The Atlas and Delta launch system families have been used for more than 50 years to carry a variety of payloads including weather, telecommunications and national security satellites, as well as deep space and interplanetary exploration missions in support of scientific research. ULA has also provided launch services for non-government satellites.

To give you an idea what is planned by the private ventures, here is a Youtube video published by Elon Musk's Space X.

As we walked back to the truck to return home from Kennedy Space Center, we turned to look back at the fuel tank and boosters for Shuttle Atlantis.  There, symbolically, was the moon, looking over the rocket's shoulder.  We thought that was appropriate.  Obviously, the shortest distance to the moon must be from Kennedy Space Center, so this is where the launches should take place!