Saturday, June 13, 2009

Day 13: KSC Tour

Jason and I woke up at 3AM Sat. morning to find the launch scrubbed. So we slept in and decided to hit up the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and do the cool NASA stuff.
img_1217.jpg
We did a lot of neat stuff. First we hit up the IMAX film about the moon landing. It was in 3D, and done pretty well actually.
img_1218.jpg
There was a full scale mock-up of the space shuttle on premises, along with a full scale mockup of the SRB's and External Tank.
img_1222.jpg
img_1220.jpg
Check out the cool tiles.
img_1233.jpg
Mock up of the internal bay with a fake satellite.
img_1240.jpg
Shuttle cockpit.
img_1239.jpg
We checked out the astronaut memorial...something that I had seen on TV after the Columbia accident and had wanted to see. It's designed as a reflecting wall so the names appear in the clouds. Beautiful, and moving.
img_1241.jpg
The rocket garden was pretty neat too. The horizontal rocket is the Saturn 1B.
img_1248.jpg
The famous F1 engine from the Saturn V rocket used in the Apollo program.
img_1252.jpg
Too big to fit them all on the camera, even with a wider angle lens.
img_1253.jpg
We finished up the day with a cool drink and a walk thru of the Early Exploration museum. Pretty cool to see what was required to get to space back in the day. This shot is the ablative material from an old re-entry capsule.
img_1272.jpg
The NASA control room from the 1960's. I am going to have to remember this for my dream home.
img_1269.jpg

We ended the day with some speculation of NASA's plans, developing our own contingency plans for the rest of the trip and heading off to bed early to get good sleep.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Links to this post:

Create a Link

<< Home