NASAKennedySpaceCenter

What a terrific visit we had in Titusville! The marina and staff were wonderful, and the location was great to get to the KennedySpaceCenter. We rented a car from Enterprise and got upgraded to a full size car so that was nice.

On Wednesday we were off on our tour of KennedySpaceCenter.

I had made reservations to go on the NASA Up-Close guided tour. This was a bus tour to see all the giant structures that make up the world’s largest launch facility. Our first stop was a place where we could see the whole facility at once.

Then we went to observation areas a little closer to the individual sites. As suspected, we were NOT able to get all that close to anything. We did learn a new vocabulary, however.

The Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) is the biggest building on Cape CanaveralKennedySpaceCenter. As you might guess it is where the launches are assembled before rolling out to the launchpads. There are seven “garage doors” that lift as the vehicles leave. The earlier Apollo and Saturn rockets were supported by a 44 story tall “launch umbilical tower” and needed the full height of the garage. The space shuttles only need half as much clearance.

The VAB also has the painted NASA symbol and the largest painted United State flag in the world. The blue section is the size of a basketball court.

The shuttles/”orbiters” and other rockets are moved to the launchpads by the “crawler transporter”, and as its name implies moves less than a mile per hour, but has the precision of 1/64^th of an inch. The shuttle Atlantis was moved to its pad on Wednesday night to prepare for its upcoming flight.

Launchpad 41 had an Atlas rocket in position to be launched Thursday evening. We were excited because we would be able to see it from the marina in Titusville. It is a classified mission by the US Airforce – you can read and see it on the website at the end of this blog.

The launchpads were huge and had lightning rods as well as equipment to measure the amount of static electricity. The structures – mobile launcher platforms (MLP), crawler transporter and the pads themselves – that supported the tall rockets in the past have been remodeled to accommodate the newer space shuttle.

The pads also have huge water towers that play an important role during the launches. As the countdown nears zero, the towers are emptied into the large cement facility on the ground flooding the area. This acts as a sound suppression system as well as minimizing vibration and heat. We were told that otherwise the noise would be unbearable and the vibrations would shake the shuttle to pieces. The water completely evaporates during the launch.

We experienced the launch of the first manned space flight with Alan Shepard – what a crazy, brave man he must have been – while observing the actual launch control center. That was in 1961 and the systems check board lit up as things were checked off. We’ve come a long way, baby!

Here is a capsule for three – Mark thought it was one of the Apollo series.

The Saturn V rocket was on its side – can’t photo to the end of it. In this building we also saw the lunar landing module and vehicle. Imagine entrusting your life to these things – What kind of spirit gives astronauts the desire to launch themselves into the unknown??? Or as our tour guide said – “strap themselves on top of a small hydrogen bomb.” I thought I would be the first woman in space when I was a kid – now I can’t imagine how that would have worked – too much work, drive, and daring.

We went to the Space Station Processing Facility where the cargoes are prepared for the International Space Station (ISS). We watched from an enclosed space above as the men and women worked in “bunny suits” to keep all materials free of contamination.

We walked through models of parts of the space station. (This is what we see in the movies.) The ISS is 365 ft across and 290 ft long and manned by an international crew. One astronaut in a video when asked how the toilet works simply said, “Think suction”!

The following space facts were taken from the tour brochure prepared by NASA and the KennedySpaceCenter:

• The two Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) contain solid fuel, which is consumed at the rate of 10 tons each second at launch. The SRBs have the thrust of 35 Boeing 747s and are jettisoned after 2 minutes, 4 seconds of flight. Later they are retrieved from the Atlantic Ocean.
• Prior to launch the Space Shuttle weighs 4.5 million pounds: 3.8 million pounds are propellants consumed in 8.5 minutes.
• The orbiter travels at 17,500 MPH – 5 miles a second. At that speed the astronauts circle the planet every 90 minutes!

After the bus tour we watched a 3-D IMAX presentation of the Hubble Telescope. Amazing and having not watched 3-D since we were children we were delighted with that aspect.

We would highly recommend visiting the KennedySpaceCenter if you are in the area. We were not able to see and experience everything – although we could have used our admission tickets another day (within a week). NASA has manned space flights planned for the future if funding continues. That may be in jeopardy.

Thursday turned out to be a perfect day for a rocket launch. We were prepared with tripod and the BIG camera lens. Well, we didn’t hear it, but suddenly it was high in the air before we realized it. The sound came later. As we returned to Grateful, others commented to us how lucky we were to see all three stages of the rocket. I believe I saw the third stage – a couple of little sparkles just as the rocket went out of sight. Good Stuff!!

Fun NASA websites:

www.nasa.gov

www.kennedyspacecenter.com

The dollars invested in the space program yield many new products, technologies and processes – many that I was not aware of. These “spin-offs” include computers, microchips, freeze-dried foods, satellite communications, weather study predictions and many more. I love to read about the advances in medicine. Go to the following websites:

http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/spinoff.html

http://technology.ksc.nasa.gov

If you would like to know when the ISS will be flying over your hometown, check out this website:

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station

This site tells the status of launches and landings with video:

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/