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Published: March 29th 2008
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One Small Step for Man.....
One giant step for a Dickhead at Kennedy Space Centre. Having lived in Florida for nearly 18 months now we decided that it was time we should visit one of it's major attractions - The Kennedy Space Centre. Although we've told all our visitors to go there, and have been down there to see a launch, Fi and I just hadn't managed to get down there some how......
The Space Centre is about 2 hours south of Jacksonville and a little under and hour east of Orlando, so to make the most of our trip we decided to head down to Orlando on Saturday, stay the night and then jump across to Cape Canaveral early on Sunday morning.....but what to do during our spare time in Orlando?? It took Fiona about half a second to come up with an idea....SHOPPING. Orlando is a shopper-holics paradise....big complexes of outlet stores covering acres and acres of land. Now these stores aren't just the crappy 'outlet' stores we get at home - these places pretty much run the same stock as normal stores but at hugely reduced prices. We're talking stores like Nike, Calvin Klein, Columbia, Adidas, BOSE, Timberland, Guess....(unfortunately the list goes on). And they really sell stuff cheap - usually around
The De Lorean
If this had been the only thing we had seen all day, it still would have been awesome. 1.21 JIGAWATTS!! 70% off from normal store prices. Needless to say Fiona was in heaven and I was in hell and the Devil was a chick who also likes to shop.
Fortunately for me, all good things must come to an end and we soon had to jet off to make our dinner reservation at 'Slueth's Murder Mystery Dinner'. This is one of those places where you eat, drink & be merry while actors play out a story on stage and you have to try
to work out who has committed the 'murder'. Fortunately all drinks are included in the price so it makes for a great night!! Needless to say both Fiona and I got it completely wrong and had no idea who had committed the murder, but we certainly enjoyed the red wine, and the white wine, and the beer.......
Next morning we got up and headed straight for the Space Centre. The day got off to an excellent start when we realised there were a couple of tolls on the road between Orlando and Cape Canaveral. Fi and I usually don't carry cash and hadn't prepared for this, so there was a bit of sweating in the
The Vehicle Assembly Building
This sucker is so big it has a ventilation system to prevent to the formation of clouds and rain inside. car and we passed through each toll. The tolls here are a bit weird, usually they are between 50c - $1, but they have a heap of them one after the other which is painful when you are in a hurry. We were starting to get worried after the second one - luckily for us, the poo-change in Fi's wallet left us with five cents spare after the last toll......we were very relieved.
The day got better when we arrived at the Space Centre and pulled up in the car park next to a De Lorean!! For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, you need to go stand in a room full of mirrors and take a good hard look at yourselves. The De Lorean is the car made into a time machine in Back to the Future, so I was pretty stoked to see one. The owner had a pretty cool number plate too - 88mph.......if you don't get that one then you need to watch the movie!!
Anyway, Fi and I weren't really too sure what to expect at the Space Centre, and I was a bit worried it would
The Saturn Rocket
Here's me in front of the massive Saturn Rocket! be a whole heap of nerds in white coats geeking it up and telling me stuff that my small brain couldn't contain (it's having enough trouble retaining the information I need for my studies at the moment). Fortunately for me and my pea sized brain the place had almost a theme park feel with two 3-D IMAX theatres, a shuttle launch simulator and a lot of really interactive exhibits which were entertaining. They also provide a bus tour and take you around the space centre which was amazing to see.
The first stop on the tour was the Vehicle Assembly Building or VAB (Good to see the military isn't the only place that reduces everything to a Three Letter Acronym (TLA). This building was absolutely huge, in fact it is the second biggest building in the world by volume. This is the place where they put the rockets on the shuttle and then the shuttle on the crawler to take it out to the launch pad. This building is so big that it has an extensive ventilation system to stop clouds and then rain forming inside the building.
The next stop was to the original control centre of
The Orignial Apollo Control Room
This is where they controlled all the original Apollo missions, and where they filmed Apollo 13 with Tom Hanks. the Apollo missions. It was set up exactly as it had been when the US was attempting to be the first country to get to the moon. They also have a Saturn Rocket broken down into its components so you can see what the astronauts were launched on. The amazing thing about the Saturn Rocket was that one single engine provided more power than the 3 engines currently used shuttle combined, and the Saturn had five of them!!! It was incredibly long too - had the same power as an atomic bomb and three guys used to sit on top of it and fly to the moon....was incredible to stand next to one of these things and look at it in detail.
The last thing we checked out here was the command module - the place where the astronauts spent most of their time. These things were so tiny - and they spent days and days on board them. They were insulated so well, that if you put a bucket of ice inside a command module at freezing temperature and then put the whole module in a 25 degree room it would take 8.5 years for the ice to
The Rocket Garden
A lovely garden outside with all the rockets and engines used in the space program. melt.....my head is getting sore.
Finally, the last stop of the tour was the International Space Station Centre. Here we were able to learn about the history of the space station, and I must admit I was pretty ignorant of the whole program. There is some pretty incredible scientific work being done which was mindblowing to see. They had an observation deck onto the 'factory' floor where were were able to watch them putting together one of the final pieces for the space station. The launch for this piece is scheduled for 24th May, so hopefully Fi and I will get down to watch it go up!!
After the tour we decided to catch the two 3D movies at the IMAX theatre. Fiona spotted a mock up of an astronaut and wanted to get a cool cheesy photo of her cuddling up to it. Just as she smacked a kiss on the reflective visor on the helmet the statue reached out and grabbed Fi scaring the absolute you-know-what out of her. It was a guy dressed in the outfit scaring people, and he really did get get Fiona!! After she had stopped giggling she said it was lucky
I nearly wet myself......
Here's Fiona shortly after having the brownies scared out of her.....(notice the beetroot face) she'd just been to the toilet or she would've wet herself!!
The Kennedy Space Centre really was an excellent place to visit - I must admit I am in awe of what NASA has achieved, and plan to do in the future. It's a real pity Australia isn't involved in any real way as it is a great undertaking that would be amazing to be part of. For those of you still coming to visit us I would definitely plan a day trip to head down here - I thought it was better than all the theme parks we have been to!
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Mylo
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Aussies have no part in NASA stuff?
Are you from Syria? Does a certain movie called "The Dish" ring any bells?