Cape Canaveral

It was another of those days where I was walking amongst living history. The Kennedy Space Centre is vast, I mean its really really big. I took a bus ride from the visitors centre that lasted for 50 minutes it took us out past launch control, the vehicle assembly building (VAB) and the famous Apollo and Space Shuttle launch pads themselves. We didn't dawdle but that's seriously how long it took. I think it is something like 13 miles from the VAB to the launch pad. Did I mention it's humongous?

Now where we are in Florida is near Port Canaveral which is a commercial port and cruise ship dock, there is not much else around. I fear that Graceland and Kennedy Space Centre have been to the same money extraction school. Again $10 to park. I don't mind paying really I don't but we are miles from anywhere and in the middle of this vast empty space, it's extortion. 

To make up for it however the toys are really cool. They have a real Saturn Rocket, a real Space Shuttle and a very cool shuttle simulator. It was a different experience to Houston but still seeing how it all fitted together was fascinating.

Those are some real wheels off the space shuttle, the rear ones were only used once and front ones twice. That is the real launch control as it was for Apollo 8. That is the real re-entry vehicle as recovered from the Apollo 14 mission. Of course the top is the real Space Shuttle Atlantis.

I learnt some interesting things here. The massive plumes of sparks you see for about ten seconds before launch are deliberate and are there to burn off any extra fuel that may escape during take off so you don't get a massive fire. The huge clouds of what I thought was smoke during launch is actually steam. They drop 1.1 mega litres of water on the launch pad as a sound suppression tool and it gets vaporised during takeoff. There were another cool thing I got to do today. I walked out on the gantry used by the Apollo 11 astronauts on the moon mission.

Also I got to see a Manatee (basically they are a sea cow) in the wild today at Cape Canaveral. Sadly I couldn't get the camera out in time. There are only 5,000 Florida Manatees and sightings are not common. As soon as it saw us it dove down and muddied the water then crawled/swam away in the murkiness. This is what one looks like.

So back to the space stuff. We took at a look at the transporter which took the shuttles from the VAB to the launch pad. Top speed unloaded 2 miles and hour. Top speed loaded just under one mile an hour. The entire unit weighs in at about 2,700,000 kilograms and has eight tracks, two on each corner each with 57 shoes that weigh just short of 2,000 kilograms each themselves.

The other really amazing thing is the Vehicle Assembly building itself. It sits pretty much alone so its hard to get an idea of the scale of the thing but it is where they put together the final bits of the Apollo missions and Space Shuttle missions in an upright position. The pictures below have an American flag on them. The stars on the flag are two metres across. You could park a bus on a stripe and not touch it's edge. It is so large it has to have special ventilation to prevent clouds forming and even rain from falling. 

Anyway that's it from the Geek Wonderlost roadtrip for the day. I am hoping to do Harry Potter World tomorrow but it will depend on a few things coming together. Fingers crossed.