Day 23 - Kennedy Space Center FL Tuesday, 8 July Mileage 4200ish

This day turned out to be a very interesting and educational day.  Just like I like it!  I got up, after sleeping late, at 9:45 and hit the free breakfast included with the room.  I wrote another Blog, packed the bike, and got on the rode about noonish.  It was an 11 mile drive to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC from now on ;-) and man have they done this place right!

This was the drive out to it

A beautiful ride in the cooler 90 degree air

What's that sticking out above the trees?

No, it's not free, but well worth the price . . .

I'm here and starting the self guided tour.  Here is the guy who put us on the road to space

The visit includes a 2 hour bus tour of the launch facilities.  I did that first and here are some of the more interesting things I saw, just in case you never get this way . . .  :-)

This was walking through to the buses, that leave every 15 minutes

Driving a few miles (this place is BIG - 220 square miles big) we came into where you see on TV.  The big building was the largest building on earth for a long time and if they put all the space inside (no pun intended - space . . .) into a single level, it still is the largest in the world!  This is where they build all the rockets going into space

Those doors are the largest in the world and are on both ends  you can see one open on the right side of the building.

For size comparison, the bus could easily drive down any one of those stripes on the flag and the flag is the size of a football field!  It takes 650 gallons of paint to paint it and the building would hold 3 Empire State Buildings!!  BIG!!!!  This shot is from a mile away . . .

After they build the rocket and attach the space shuttle to it, they have to move it to one of the 2 launch facilities they use for this big thing  It gets there using a huge moving tractor . . .

Each cleat of the 8 tracks weighs over a ton (2,000 pounds)  EACH CLEAT!  This thing weighs over 6 Million pounds and carries the 12,000,000 rocket and shuttle down a very special road.  Top speed, 1 (One) mile per hour!  Here are the roads it travels.

Two sets of tracks on this side of the grass and 2 sets on the other side of the grass

These roads are 12 feet of granite and 6 feet of Tennessee river rock thick!  to hold all the weight  There is that big building in the background (5 miles away) and the big tractor on the left (a mile away)

All these roads lead to the launch facility.  You can see the two tracks going up-hill to the place

The tracks are still in the stone from the last trip . . .

There are these towers ALL over the place.  They are lightening rods?  It turns out this place is the lightening capital of the WORLD With sometimes over 500 strikes per minute!  And they have these big towers, higher than the launce facilities, to attract the lightening?  And they work . . .

This is one of the 6 inch thick concrete plates that sits under the big rockets when they ignite.  You can see the melted concrete and this happens even with tons of water being poured on them and everthing else to keep everything from melting!

  Half way through the bus ride, they drop you off at the Saturn 5 rocket building.  AFter a few movies, watching a Saturn 5 launch (with big seat vibrators hooked to everyones seats for effects :-) you get to see a full size rocket  This is the rocket that got us to the moon . . . and big it is!!!

Here is the business end

Try looking down this picture at just how big this thing is!  Pictures can not do it justice!

To the right are over 200 models of the Marine/Navy F-18.  This rocket puts out more energy than thoses together . . .  Read some of the comparisons, they are interesting

This is a Crawler Cleat at apx 2000 pounds.

After the initial blast off, the back end drops away and nthis rocket fires

The the next stage fires, it goes on and on . . .

In the end, all this to get the capsule up there into orbit

and finally it all breaks away to land someone on the moon

In this . . .

The size is what gets you on all of this and I promise the pictures can't show how big stuff is.  It makes you proud to be an American!!!

Then we got back on the bus back to the main part of the park.  I immediately went to the Atlantis exibit and got WOW'ed again.  After watching an exciting movie about how complicated the mission to fix the Hubble Telescope, the screen raises and behind a sheer drape you see this big nose looking at you.  The raise this sheer and BAM, in your face is this:

The actual Alantis Space Shuttle!  Hanging, with bay doors open and the Arm sticking out

nothing but COOL here!!!

This a a copy of the Hubble Telescope they worked on.  To get this in the whole shuttle, they needed more than a Saturn 5.  They came up with this:

Again BIG and please read about the engine heat from this one

Another interesting fact was this:

All of them have to work exactly right, all the time!  2,500,000 parts!

The place closed before I finished, so I had to stay another night and continue the next day!

Back to a hotel for the night

LUKE Out!