Day at Kennedy Space Center

Growing up in the 1960s, it was a fairly routine happening when a rocket was taking off from Cape Canaveral, Florida.  Classes stopped and either the moments before, during and after the liftoff of space rockets first circling our earth, and then, going further…..to the moon!

When we entered the Kennedy Space Center, we walked past the large NASA globe and the water feature with the quote by President John F. Kennedy featured in that.  It was almost overwhelming as we waked by all the buildings that held information about all aspects of the US Space Race.

One of the attractions that had previously been out of reach to those attending the previous “version” of the Space Center, was access to the areas where rockets are assembled and where they take off.  There is a huge building that dominates the landscape and as we approached it, it just loomed higher and higher.  Its call the Vertical Assembly Building, or VAB, and it’s incredible.  It is the largest single story building in the world.  It encompasses almost 350,000 square feet.  The blue of the flag of the building is the size of a regulation basketball court, with the stars 6 feet across.  As a fun trivia fact, it would take 250 billion ping pong balls to fill the VAB!  The bay doors (photo on the right) are 456 feet high and takes 45 minutes to open or close.  It was built in the 1960s to build the Saturn V rockets that were part of the Apollo moon mission.

There were other very cool pieces of equipment that we got to see on this tour of the space launch area.  If you are of an age to remember the moon mission, you may recall watching the giant rockets being wheeled to the actual launch pad.  Well, this collection of images illustrates the equipment used.  The bottom photo is of The Crawler.  It does pretty much what its name implies.  It moves along at about 1mph if it has a rocket on it, and about 2mph when its “unloaded”.  On top of The Crawler sits the Launch Platform (middle photo).  The rockets are actually assembled on the Launch Platform and when it’s complete and ready to head into space, The Crawler slips (relatively speaking) under the Launch Platform and takes the rocket to the actual launch pad.  The rocket, in the top photo, is actually one I took of a rocket from what I call The Rocket Garden, but more about that in a moment.  I placed that photo here just to give you an idea of how these pieces of equipment work together.

This is Launch Pad 39A, which is currently being used by SpaceX, for their rocket launches.  It is only one of several pads, but it’s the only one we could get relatively close to.  The photo on the right is the road that The Crawler travels as it takes the rockets to their launch pad.  It’s absolutely huge, and serves to hopefully, give some perspective about how large these pieces of equipment are!

After we completed the bus tour of the launch area, we were able to walk through a building that had one of the Saturn V booster rockets on display.  These were the actual rocket boosters that were used in the Apollo program on the Apollo rockets.  I felt so tiny standing under and alongside of them.  I was taken by the idea that I may have watched these rocket boosters doing their job when I was a kid!

As we wandered closer to the exit of the Space Center, we passed what I call The Rocket Garden.  It had examples of the various rockets used during many phases of what I think of as the Space Race, as it was called when I was a kid.  I also got kind of a kick out of looking at a much enlarged copy of the flight plan from one of the rocket launch missions.  I couldn’t determine which one, but I had to chuckle at the idea of us making it to the moon (or some phase of getting to the moon) with a flight plan that was hand-written!!

As we left the Kennedy Space Center, we got one last glimpse of The Rocket Garden behind what is the original Countdown Clock.  Again, if you are of my age, you may remember the news broadcasters making reference to it, and the cameras cutting to it as we drew ever closer to the time when the space craft would leave earth’s gravity for a great and grand adventure!

Enjoy!