No doubt about it, Florida is a very popular destination for the winter holidays. If you are treating yourself to sun, sand and space this holiday season. The tour starts with a 90-minute bus tour of the entire complex that showed us the actual vehicle assembly building where the rockets are assembled, the launchpad for the shuttles all the while explaining what goes into getting to space. We stopped off first to watch the history of the NASA space program and its progress over the years
The introduction was all about how the ‘man on the moon’ mission came about along with the speech from Kennedy, followed by the actual control room from where the first successful shuttle to the moon was launched, to live the ‘race to the moon’. With a countdown timer running on the side, the relevant controls lighting up in front of us and the realistic sound and light effect of a rocket launch. The exhibit closes with one walking into a large area displaying Saturn V, at 363 feet long, the largest rocket ever built.
Kennedy Space Center (KSC) is located in Cape Canaveral. The approach road takes on a deserted appeal as you close in to KSC – security restrictions coupled with the fact that the 3-mile radius of the launch facility is strictly out-of-bounds explains this. Since 1968 to date KSC has been the launch site for all US manned space flights, while its neighbor Cape Canaveral Air Force Station conducts the unmanned civilian launches. Also, KSC is considered as part of the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge which was established by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in its quest for space exploration way back in 1963 and as such it is illegal to kill wildlife within the facility.
A trip to NASA is guaranteed to inspire awe and amazement, it will give you a renewed feeling of wide eyed wonder at really how amazingly expansive the universe is, and how, despite all our breath-taking achievements, we’ve only gone so far…. and the sky calls to us.
Photo Credit: https://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/