Wednesday - April 20, 2011

Got up this morning and went right over to this neat hardware store about a block from the marina to see if they had a light, since a couple of our lights in the boat had burned out. This is an old hardware store and has a lot of stuff but not the light I needed. I browsed around a bit, bought a couple of things and then went back to the boat. Phoned Enterprise and rented a car for the day so that we could go up to the Kennedy Space Center.

The shuttle transporter



We drove over to Space Center which was only about 11 miles away and went in. About 20 years or so ago we went with the kids (I think Lesley was a year old) but the Center is completely different now. You also look at things differently when you don't have rug rats with you. Had a bus tour through to the launch area, although we really did not get close to the pads and saw the next shuttle which is set to go for an April 29 launch. They bring the shuttles over some 30 days in advance for preparation on a specially built vehicle that moves at around .5 miles per hour from the building where work is done on the shuttle. In the picture below you see the Endeavour sitting on the pad with the big fuel tank sitting about the structure. to the right is a tank of liquid hydrogen cooled to below -400 degrees. Can't see it but to the left is a tank full of liquid oxygen. Have to keep them apart otherwise there could be an impressive explosion. These two elements are put into the fuel tanks just before launch.

Endeavor on the pad



We then went and visited the building where they have all the information about the moon launches. I forgot that they went to Apollo XVII before they shut the program down. Lots of information about the launches and they had a mock up of the Atlas rocket which kicked the astronauts into orbit. I never realized how big the rocket was, they built the building around the rocket rather than moved the rocket into the building. They explained how it was done and the various parts of the rocket and when they kicked in to move the modules into position for a slingshot to the moon. Really worth while. What really amazed me is that the calculations were done without the computers that we have today. While there were computers, they did not have the speed, capacity of today's computers. In fact many calculations were done with a slide rule.

The Atlas rocket


The command and service module for the moon trips - not much room




I took a ride on the a shuttle simulator. Quite interesting. On take off there was a tremendous amount of vibration and you felt the g-forces on your body. The vibration continued until the fuel tanks were jettisoned and then it was quiet. We then went over to the IMAX theater to watch a film in 3D on the Hubble telescope. This was really a highlight. I showed hoe the telescope has been repaired with actual filming of the repairs and showed some of the information that the Hubble is obtaining from light received from distant stars and galaxies. What amazed me was the light it was gathering was sent out billions of years ago, so it is looking back into time when these galaxies and stars were created. Who knows what they look like now. Have to wait around for another billion years unless we somehow can figure a way to transport ourselves to those stars and galaxies.

We then returned back to the boat and went to dinner with our friends from Lazy Dolphin.