Here we are in the Mosquito Coast - oh, no, now it’s called the Space Coast. Sounds much better doesn’t it? Who in the world wants to visit the Mosquito Coast? Wouldn’t you rather stay home? Ah, but visiting the Space Coast - everyone wants to do that. Sounds like a marketing ploy to me. Actually, its old name of Mosquito Coast was a nickname of the late 1800’s but the region was more famous for its Indian River Oranges. It seems that a Captain Dummitt acquired some land after the Seminole Indian Wars in the mid 1800’s and began to grow oranges. He used to wrap them in Spanish moss and ship them by dugout canoe to the coast for shipment all over the world, places like Russia and Europe. Even today more than 6,000,000 bushels of Indian River oranges are shipped worldwide.
That was then, this is now and the Space Coast is known for: get this - its space launches and exploration of space. We were especially lucky to have seen an actual launch a month or two ago and, even though the official US space program is on hold for a while, there are still launches and this is still the nerve center of America’s space exploration. We decided today to venture over to the Kennedy Space Center for the day to check out what they had here. We got there early since we knew we would be there all day and still might not get to see everything. We actually parked in the first row of the parking lot. As we walked in we got out picture taken with this strangely garbed fellow. We must be in space territory. I think we’ve got as much clothing on as he does - it was a bit cold today. Do I look stiff or do I look stiff?
Here’s just a short chronology of the space race that I wanted to see to help me remember these events:
1961 - President Kennedy’s challenge to America to fly to the moon and back
1957 - Russia sends Sputnik, an artificial satellite around the earth
1959 - Russia launches Luna 2, the first space probe to hit the moon
1961 - in March, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gargarin, circles the globe
1961 - in May Alan Shepard’s 15-minute ride in the cramped nose cone of a rocket
1961 - in May President Kennedy makes a bold declaration that America would put a man on the moon before the end of the decade
1962 - John Glenn was the first American astronaut to orbit the earth
1969 - Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon - 8 years after Kennedy stated this as a goal
1981 - the US begins shuttle flights as a result of decreased funding
late 1990’s - concentration on the International Space Station
OK, the dates are out of the way, let’s explore. We had a map that the Space Center passes out listing the ‘Must See’ things and quickly lined up for the bus tour around the grounds, by the massive cube-shaped 525’ tall Vehicle Assembly Building,
by the 1,000,000 lb Crawler which inches its way to the launch pads with the rockets and satellites on top,
by an actual launch pad used currently by SpaceX and ending at the Apollo Saturn V Center where we saw a 363’ long Saturn V moon rocket. Here is the bottom of it.
The picture below compares the size of the Saturn second from the left and the shuttle rockets on the left to the Statue of Liberty and a football field.
I’ll have to admit that the Saturn V was a real ‘WOW’ moment. It was impressive. But, then it had to be to launch the craft that it did. It was a 3-stage rocket and lo-o-ong, 363’ long. Here also were several short films, one in the Firing Room Theater which features a re-created Apollo launch and the other in the Lunar Theater which depicted the first lunar landing. Each giving a realistic idea of what it was to launch and watch from the control room.
There was also a room with a chronology of space suits. This one makes an astronaut look like a knight in shining armor.
The third building we entered was devoted to the Atlantis shuttle program. Out side were the rockets that launched the shuttles. By the way, in case you hadn’t noticed that little guy standing in front - it’s Big Gar.
They also had one of the shuttles with its cargo bay open here.
And, here are the tiles on the nosecone that were always of concern when the shuttle re-entered the atmosphere. In one case they didn’t work right and the shuttle was lost. Terrible terrible tragedy. The space program was terribly thrilling in the beginning and then it became so regular that sometimes I think we all forgot exactly how dangerous it was. The two tragedies in the shuttle program certainly slapped us up along the face and made us realize the danger. The Kennedy Space Center did not shy from all the dangers, the failures and the deaths that occurred during space flight. It covered the space program, warts and all.
Lunch now and don’t ask me about the lines. We were there at 2:00 and the lines were still long. Oh, yeah, did I tell you that this is the weekend of the Daytona 500. We saw hundreds of NASCAR caps and t-shirts. Luckily, we hadn’t planned on a short day-trip to Daytona this weekend. There are 6 restaurants in the Kennedy Complex and several coffee kiosks. This matches the number of gift shops in the Complex.
Finally, the last thing we did was to watch the 2 IMAX movies: one on the building of the International Space Station with incredible footage of the parts needed and how they are all interconnected. Parts made by different countries at different times which all fit together perfectly. Absolutely amazing. What precision, what collaboration. We may view Russia warily here on earth but in space, we’re all on the same team. Filmed by 25 astronauts aboard the ISS the space station, it was an incredibly difficult, intricate project and this is all conveyed in the film but the funny things are conveyed also. Making a taco sandwich with the tortilla turning cartwheels in the air, watching astronauts flying around the space station from compartment to compartment on their stomachs, watching tools fly around, hearing an astronaut say that going to the bathroom is ‘one word - suction.’ The humor comes through but knowing that there are an infinite number of things that could happen that could cause the Space Station to spin off into space or watching them doing extra vehicular activity knowing that one wrong move would send him or her off into space is is anxiety-producing.
The second film was on the Hubble telescope, both on its incredible views of space and the last shuttle mission to Hubble to make needed repairs so that it could continue to send us those mesmerizing, breathtaking views into the future. The Hubble has been sending these images back to earth for quite a while now but every now and then it needs repairs. This film is about the last shuttle flight to make these repairs and how incredibly difficult they were and how well trained this crew of the last shuttle mission was. One of the ‘repairmen’ likened repairing the Hubble to surgery wearing oven mitts. Meanwhile the conditions under which they are making this repair are nothing like repairing a refrigerator in a kitchen. It is often dark, the temperatures are 200 degrees below zero, tools could float away if not tethered, as could they. Of course,their backup is pretty stupendous and, if they need advice, they have mission control there to help them. In one case, they worked more than 3 hours to remove a bolt form a large handle when, finally, someone on earth monitoring and helping to manage all this said: ‘just pull it off.’ The astronaut yanked and the handle was in his hands - solved the whole problem. 3 hours of intricate, exhausting work and one good yank solved the problem.
However, the repairs, the training and the mission are only one part of this incredible film. The star of the production is Hubble itself and the incredible images it sends back to earth of the millions of galaxies out there in magazines and on TV, but these are in 3-D and - WOW - are they wonderful. One of the displays said that if you could see as well as Hubble you could see the two individual headlights of a car in California from New York. Or that you could read a newspaper from 1 mile away.
I have a picture of part of a mock-up of the Hubble but couldn’t get it all into the picture. I understand it’s as big as a bus.
Hubble has crystal clear images of nebulas far off into space. Billions of stars in millions of galaxies. The colors and images are something else. I read that regular 2-D Hubble images were converted into 3-D environments to give us, the audience, the impression that we are traveling through space and time. This was a second WOW moment for me. The colors, the images, the 3-D effect had me in awe. I suppose I had never seen images quite like this nor had the feeling that I was zooming in towards some far off nebula, watching stars form then zooming back into the present day.
And, what is even more amazing is that these images are for anyone to see, not just astronaut and astro-physicists. They’re in books and on TV. The 15th - 17th century age of discovery was an amazing time for the world but most people didn’t know about it instantaneously. Newspapers didn’t publish the wonders of the new world, TV didn’t shine pictures into every living room and we didn’t have the immediacy of the internet. But the pictures sent back by Hubble are for everyone to marvel at. We thought that the IMAX film on fixing the Hubble and the last voyage of the shuttle an awfully good film. It certainly had me entranced.
Finally, on the way out of the Center, we wandered around the Rocket Garden (someone has a sense of humor.)
And, now, it’s 5:45, time to be heading out - especially since the park closes at 6:00. Did we miss things we would have liked to see? Absolutely. We saw a few of those things that were marked ‘Must See’ and had to skip the others. But that’s for the next time we’re in the area.
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