An Aussie Bogan on the moon 🌒
I was off to good a start when I went to get in the driver’s seat on the wrong side. Then I turned on the windscreen wipers instead of the indicator – it kept getting better. It’s a weird feeling driving on the other side of the road at first, but gradually you get used to it, but I don’t think it will ever become instinctive like driving back at home.
The Kennedy Space Center (KSC) is at Cape Canaveral, just under one hour drive from our hotel. We start at Visitor Complex and then catch the tour bus to the LC-39 Observation Gantry, where we can see the Launch Complexes where the Apollo and Space Shuttle missions take place. Apollo 11, left from here with Neil Armstrong when he landed on the moon (Pictured below).
This tall building is the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB - pictured below), where the solid rocket boosters are assembled and mated together with the external tank and the orbiter to create a complete Space Shuttle.
The gravel road is the Crawlerway used to support the 18 million pound combined weight of the Crawler Transporter, Mobile Launch Platform, and the Space Shuttle, from the VAB to the Launch Complex.
The next stop is the Apollo/Saturn 5 Center. After walking through the doors, the sight of the Saturn 5 rocket, commonly called the Moon Rocket, stops people dead in their tracks. It’s huge, 111 meters long, just one foot short of St Paul’s Cathedral, London. It had to be to take a man to the moon. The Firing Room Theater is the original control complete, and recreates an Apollo mission – complete with the countdown, the roar from the rocket, and shaking windows (pictured below).
The third stop is the International Space Station Center that prepares the components for their flight to space. In a couple of years the station will finally be completed.
We return to the Visitors Center. The highlight was the Shuttle Launch Experience, which is a simulation of a real shuttle flight (pictured above). We walk into the shuttle, strap in, and then it tilts 90 degrees, and then the countdown begins, the boosters ignite, the chair rattles, you can hear the roar, and the tinkle of coins falling out of people’s pockets. The G force pushes you back into the seat, our teeth rattle - even the skin on our face wobbles. We’re now hammering at 17,500 miles per hour. Then we level out, and we feel weightless – we’re in space! The roof of the shuttle opens and we look down at Earth. I think it was the best ride I’ve ever been on. They say it’s very similar to a real takeoff.
TRAVEL TIP: The new Shuttle Launch Experience is a definite ‘must do’ on any trip to Florida. I think it’s the best ride I’ve ever been on.
Opposite, we walk through a full-scale replica of the Shuttle Explorer. The IMAX Theater has a great 3D show called “Walking on the Moon’ narrated by Tom Hanks, and you really do feel like “you are walking on the moon’. The Rocket Garden (pictured below) has a number of rockets used in the space program. Note the massive Saturn rocket.
The Kennedy Space Center is one of the best attractions we’ve been to in the United States; we didn’t realize how good it was going to be, otherwise we would have arrived earlier in the day. We stayed, until they kicked us out at 6pm.
I tried out to be an astronaut, but they said I looked too silly in the space suit (pictured below). What do you think?
