Today we drove about an hour to Cape Canaveral to visit the Kennedy Space Centre. John F Kennedy visited this facility on the 16th of November 1963, just six days prior to his assassination on the 22nd, and as a result the entire cape was named after him. It was later named back to Canaveral, but the space centre held his name still. He was a huge advocate for the USA visiting the moon ahead of Russia. In the late 50s, the space race between the USA and Russia began because there was a lot of hostility due to missile testing and uncertainty. John F Kennedy’s famous quote “we choose to go to the moon this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard...” was very inspirational and was played and written many places within the facility.
This site has many NASA launchpads, and all of the famous major launches have occurred here such as the Apollo missions, Gemini missions, the launch of the Hubble Telescope and many more.
Thanks to my friend Ash that had visited here before, we made a beeline for the launchpad bus tour. We were the third group in line and got straight on the first bus. Later in the day the queue was 200m long. Great advice if you’re coming here!
The bus tour went for about 45 minutes, and our guide Tommy was very knowledgeable. He’s worked in the area for over 50 years, and says the facility was built here because there are no houses nearby and a huge expanse of ocean next door, so in case of accidents people are out of harm’s way. It’s also built here due to being close to the equator, so rockets launched here get a boost in that way too due to the Earth's rotational speed being the highest at the equator.
On the bus tour, we saw the vehicle assembly building with the biggest doors in the world, and the largest painted USA flag in the world (600 gallons of paint required!). This is where rockets were assembled and eventually wheeled out on transport vehicles that we also saw, to be taken to their launchpad. These vehicles can hold up to 18 million pounds. The rocks on the path to the launchpads are Alabama river rock. The reason for this is that they contain no iron so they don’t spark.
We saw launchpad 39A, where Apollo 11 was launched sending Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to the moon on the 16th of July 1969. The flight took about three days due to the moon being approximately 384,000km away from Earth, so the actual walk occurred on the 20th of July. Even though Russia “beat” the USA in sending man into space for the first time (1957 followed by the USA in 1961) the USA “beat” Russia by walking on the moon first. Funnily enough, I actually only watched the episode of ‘The Crown’ covering this on the plane here. Sadly, JFK never got to see the USA reach the moon. But apparently on his grave after the moonwalk in 1969, someone placed some flowers and a card that read “mister president, the eagle has landed”. Over the years, there were 82 launches from this site. Nowadays, it’s rented for $1 billion US per year by Elon Musk and his company SpaceX who create different vehicles and work in cahoots with NASA and Boeing here.
Our bus journey continued and we saw a few more launchpads. As well, we saw some alligators! There is a lot of wildlife on the cape apparently. Tommy told us there is currently virtually no unemployment in this county due to all the jobs available with the space facility. Apparently it’s down to 3.5% as an average US wide.
Once the bus tour ended, we were taken to a shed outside of the main complex where we saw the launch centre for the Apollo missions. An incredible 26,000 people worked on this site during the Apollo launches. We then saw the Saturn V rocket and lots of other exhibitions. We saw the Fisher Space pen that was designed to be used in space in zero gravity conditions, many astronaut suits and materials, moon rocks and more. Apparently the dust of the moon is very abrasive and damaging to astronaut suits.
There was a lot of information in here about the Apollo missions. The first Apollo mission ended in disaster, when the command module caught fire on launch and all three astronauts inside died. This set the USA back a year and a half, and put them even further back in the space race. Before Apollo 11 and Neil Armstrong walking on the moon, other Apollo missions orbited the moon and gathered information. Apollo 8 was the first to do so with astronauts on board. Apollo 13 was called a “successful failure” as it too had problems, but the astronauts were able to make an emergency landing in the ocean and survived.
In total, the USA landed on the moon six times, and 12 people have walked on the moon. One day, it is hoped we will be able to walk on Mars. However, while the moon is about a ten day round trip, Mars would be 2.5 to 3 years - six months of travel each way, 18 months waiting there for the planets to line up appropriately again. Not to mention that just by flying to the moon, astronauts are exposed to a lot of radiation. Going to Mars would expose them to an extremely dangerous level.
After we finished in this building, we caught another bus back to the main facility. While on that bus, we saw a bald eagle sitting near its huge nest. Apparently there are 22 nests on site, and in some of them, dog and cat collars have been discovered! Yikes!
The next building we went into showed us a video about the Atlantis space shuttle. Once the video ended, we got to go and see it. It was huuuuuuuge! Over a 26 year period, it went on 33 missions, carried 207 astronauts and travelled 203 million kilometres. It was one of the first space vehicles to be created that was reusable and could go on multiple missions. In the same hall, we also saw inside some other vehicles and a huge telescope, as well as astronaut beds, toilets and food. There was also a 'Fallen Heroes' section in here. This was dedicated to the astronauts on the Challenger in 1986 that died during its launch, and the Colombia in 2003 that died during its reentry phase. It was sad walking along looking at their photos and belongings, particularly those that had photos of them with their children. There were also some debris from each wreckage there.
Next we watched an IMAX film called 'Touch the Stars' which was really good, and showed us lots of fantastic footage related to probes and rovers. We were really impressed today with all the films and interactive activities, simulators etc. available. Then we explored the rocket garden, and the Heroes and Legends hall.
Our final stop for the day at the space centre was an 'Astronaut Encounter' talk. We had retired astronaut Sam Gemar talk to us as a group for about 45 minutes about his experiences as an astronaut. He was inducted by NASA in 1985 and retired in 1998. During his time as an astronaut, he went on three space missions. He showed us lots of great photos he had captured up there of volcanoes erupting, the Nile River and city lights. It was so cool! He told us that all the training took place in Houston before coming here, and that as an astronaut your muscles and bones shrink, so you need to work out a lot to try and keep them in check. He also said your body eliminates about 1L of blood in the first 24 hours thinking it doesn't need it due to the zero gravity. He then went to the audience for questions, and ended by telling us that no launches have happened here since 2011, but that two are planned for 2020! We got a photo with him as well. He was a really lovely man.
On the way home we got Chipotle for dinner and now I've just packed up ready for tomorrow. Tomorrow, we head to San Juan, Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is a territory of the US so we will still have internet and Rob's SIM card will still work.
We had a great day today, and I'm really glad. In terms of Orlando overall - I don't know that I would come back. All the parts of town are super spread out, and the traffic is bad at any time of day. In between all the different areas there's just huge areas of land with nothing in them. It's not easy to get around, and as you know we've had a couple of bad experiences here. I liked Epcot, I loved the space centre today, and the swamp tour was good. I just don't think it's somewhere I need to return to! Looking forward to chilling out in the Caribbean for the next few weeks. I can't wait to have lots of fruit and veggies on our cruise coming up!!
Love to all
Claire
Xoxox
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