Saturday, March 17, 2007

Left for the Kennedy Space Center this morning at about 9:30. Very chilly today. Stopped at Denny’s for breakfast. Took the Florida Turnpike again. Should have bought a Sun Pass for all the tolls we’ve paid the past week or so. The Space Center is pretty impressive. It sits on a barrier island about 4 times the size of Manhattan. The Center utilizes about 10% of that area. The rest is an animal preserve. They have bob cats, wild pigs, manatees, lots of gators, gopher turtles, and many birds, including a large population of eagles. There are three different tours available—ranging in price from $38 each to $52 each. We went on the $38 tour. We saw two launch pads, the vehicle assembly building. This building is huge. It has the area of 3 ¾ Empire State buildings. They build the booster rockets in this building and then bring over the shuttle and attach to the booster and raise to a vertical position. Then they haul the whole thing on a “crawler transport” to the launch pad. It takes about 8 hours to get it there. The crawl travels at about one mile an hour. We also toured the International Space Station center where they’re working on the next module to be sent up to the Space Station. We also saw the Saturn V rocket that was used for all the Apollo missions. A huge rocket. And there was a great IMAX movie created by Lockheed Martin in 3D. It was a great day. We came back via Route 50. Went through the town of Christmas, FL, right through Orlando. The older part of town is very Asian… a lot of Vietnamese restaurants. Stopped for burgers on the way back. Finally made it back a little after 8:00.