Kennedy Space Center

The Atlas 5 booster is gigantic. It's a powerful, ancient totem that rocketed men to the moon nearly 50 years ago. When you stand under the first stage's engines it is so immense that you scarcely believe that it could have been built by man...from below I get a shivery sense of amazing accomplishment and faded glory.

They're planning the SLS (Space Launch System) as the next generation of rocket for the Mars mission. It might launch as early as 2017. With 130 tons of payload it will dwarf the Atlas 5.

They've already built the SLS launch tower. Here's a shot of it below.

How strange it seems to see the moon astronauts dying off of old age problems...

Here's a Florida sunset with nothing much to do with the Space Center.

The Atlantic from our motel balcony.

Cousin Katie and Mrs. Phred.

This area reminded me of Istanbul in a secular sort of way...

Mrs Phred is spam in a can....

They had some things just for kids...like Angry Birds and mirror mazes....

The Shuttle solid fuel rockets and external fuel tank...

Shuttle launch...

I think this is the Columbia on display...They have a really impressive simulation of a shuttle launch...Mrs. Phred and I both rode it...

The ISS (International Space Station).

At the time it was built, the NASA vehicle assembly building was the 3rd largest building on Earth by volume. The stars on the flag are six feet across.

Here's a shot of one of the old shuttle launch pads.

One of the "crawlers" used to transport launch vehicles from the assembly buildings to the launch pad. These are being refurbished in the idle time between the retirement of the shuttle system and the arrival of the SLS (Space Launch System).

An Apollo on the pad...

 

Apollo launch control room...ancient state of the art systems...

Welcome back!