Kennedy Space Station

Here is a shot of the spaceman that hovers above the entrance to the Kennedy Space Center. The center in located in Titusville, which is about 30min from Gary and Margo's condo in Cocoa Beach. They can watch shuttle launches from the patio.

Here is the shuttle all prepared for launch. It was supposed to go up a couple of weeks before we got there but weather caused it to delay until after our vacation was over. It would have been fun to watch it take off. It is hard to grasp how large this complex is in the picture. As a guess, I would say the brown building on the left is a one story building.

Here is a wider picture of the complex. The white bulb to the left is where they store the liquid hydrogen they use as fuel for the shuttle. The white bulb on the right is the storage tank for the liquid oxygen that they use for fuel and breathing. The hydrogen is stored farther away due to its explosive qualities.

Here are the tracks that the crawler moves on to take the shuttle to one of two launch pads. The crawler moves about 1 mph loaded and 2 mph unloaded. It gets about 1 mile per 150 gallons of diesel fuel. That is some really bad gas mileage. The road is around 8 feet thick of crush granite, which is needed to support the massive weight of the crawler and shuttle.

This is the building where the shuttle is prepared for the next launch. They normally take the engines totally apart to make sure everything is in working order. Then they assemble the solid and liquid booster engines before connecting the shuttle. This building is 2 1/2 times the height of the Statue of Liberty.

Here is the tail end of a Saturn Five rocket that propelled the Apollo missions to the moon.

Here is one tread of the crawler belt. It weighs one ton.

You wouldn't believe our luck. They actually asked for volunteers to go to the moon from the audience and Heather and I were chosen! Here is a picture to prove that we were indeed there. Heather chose to play the accordion while she was there and I was putting some rocks in a white box.

Here is a picture of the next payload to go up to the international space station. This payload is from Japan. Everything is sterilized and then they put saran wrap around the entire package. I think they do this to piss off the astronauts. Can you image trying to remove saran wrap from a truck load of supplies in zero gravity? No wonder missions in space take forever. As a side note, the International Space Station is really not so international. I would say the U.S. has built about 85% of the space station with Russia adding 10%, Canada 2.5%, and Japan 2.5%. The other 10-12 countries have barely done anything.

Here is a replica of the booster rockets and shuttle that are currently being used. Once the International Space Station is complete, NASA is going to scrap the shuttle system and go back to the pod system like the Apollo missions.

Here is a picture of the heat tiles on the bottom of the shuttle. After every mission each tile is checked for cracks. If one is found they remove the tile and replace it. Each tile is cut to perfectly fit in the old tiles place.

Here is a huge granite ball that they had in the food court. It had all of the constellations on it. It looked like it was suspended on a thin sheet of water and rotated.

This is what they called the "Rocket Garden." It contained some of the past rockets they have used to launch satellites into space.

Heather and Korrin in the replica of the first pod to send two men into space. Not a lot of room to move. Although they did design it so that both people were slanted to the outside of the pod so they didn't have to fight about who got the window seat.

These next couple of pictures were taken by the Hubble telescope. Simply amazing pictures. Each one is a work of art. My pictures don't do it justice but you could stare at these for hours looking at all the vibrant colors and interesting shapes.

These pictures are nebulae that are million of light years away.

Really cool!

We learned a lot about the space program that day. A couple of things I will pass on to you. These are things I never knew and think every American should. The first one was that the first moon landing almost didn't happen. The computer failed on the approach to the moon. Armstrong had 17 seconds to decide whether to abort the landing or pilot the craft himself. He only had 17 seconds worth of fuel to land otherwise they would risk getting stuck on the moon. That takes guts to do something no other person has ever done and be risking your life at the same time. There would have been no way to rescue them. The second thing I didn't know was that we landed on the moon FIVE times. I thought we landed on the moon one or maybe two times. Nope, Five times. Ok, the lesson is over.