KENNEDY SPACE CENTER

We rented a convertible and drove to Cape Canaveral on Friday to spend the day at the Space Center. What a great day it was ! We saw an Imax (3-D) movie about the moon walk, took a long bus tour that goes out to the launch areas, walked through the Rocket Garden, and toured the museum. Oh yeah, and we shopped.

  
   

 

  
The Rocket Garden is a place to walk through and simply be in awe of the engineering and daring of the space program. You can sit in an Apollo mock-up and walk the actual red gantry used by the astronauts as they approached the capsule.

                                                                    

                                                                                

The bus tour took us to the launch pads, the vehicle assembly building (VAB) and allowed us drive along the route taken by the assembled shuttle craft as it goes to the launch pad.  The 7ft. deep gravel road for the crawler that moves the shuttle has cleat marks still left from the last launch. It is truly up close and personal.

                                           

                                         

 

The museum was a place we could have stayed in longer but the day was ending so we went quickly. There are all manner of moon stuff there and we even got to touch a moon rock. Also, the entire mission control room for the moon shots was moved from Houston to here; someone had an eye to history.

                                           

 
And a final word ought to said regarding security. There are guys with big guns to assist you if you turn the wrong way leaving the Center and there are a great many "volunteer security-gators" all over the place.