Kennedy Space Center

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This was always a must see for us and luckily for us there is a kennel on site so that we could spend all day here. This was a good thing as we wound up needing not only the whole day but also three hours the next day to finish what we couldn't see on the first day. What can I say except this place is amazing? Chris said right off the bat that while he had seen shuttles taking off on tv before he hadn't realized just how big they actually were. Yet despite their size if you look inside the space capsule that astronauts return home in and there is very little space. Most of what you see on the rocket or shuttle is devoted to the engines, the fuel and the thrusters needed to clear the atmosphere and as there is over 6 million pounds of thrust needed for some rockets such as the Saturn V there are some very large pieces involved. While we saw both the IMAX special on the intermnational space center and the IMAX special on the Hubble, I have to say if you plan on seeing only one IMAX movie that day definately make it the Hubble...absolutely incredible imagery caught from space and little details that make you feel even smaller and less significant than before. Details like the fact that the M42 in the Orion Nebula is over 25 light years across each light year being nearly 6 trillion miles...just one small square image in the nebula is equal to 7.5 light years... our whole solar system could fit into that square over 20 million times! That is just one tiny part of the night sky and if that doesn't make you feel slightly humbled I don't know what would. As my old astronomy teacher used to say, "You would have to be very arrogant to think that we could be the only life in the universe." I will label some of these pictures but others, well you'll just have to visit Kennedy Center yourself!

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Photos

apollo XI moon landing
newspapers from all around the world telling the news of the apollo XI moon landing

crawler river rock path
This is the path on which they transfer a shuttle by crawler from the VIF
assembly building to the launch pad. The crawler goes along alabama river rock to minimize potential sparks at a whopping two miles per hr empty or one mile per hr carrying the shuttle...there's a reason they call it the crawler!

The international space center
This was taken in the IMAX movie....obviously the space station is still being constructed in space.

Robot scouts
this display was actually pretty interesting. It talked about how robots are used where man can't go in space and future plans for mars