My family and I visited the Kennedy Space Center last week near the end of our Florida holiday vacation. While the visit and tours were interesting and comprehensive, the lasting impression it all made on me was one of nostalgia and honor of past accomplishment, with only a dimmest look to the future.
The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Center is located on Cape Canaveral, Florida, a short drive from the beaches and hotels of Cocoa Beach. Driving into the parking lot, a full-size mock space shuttle and the Rocket Garden — a standing collection of early NASA rockets — beckons visitors young and old. After standing in line (the first of many) to buy a $38 ticket, you’re in and facing the decision of what to do first.
Aside from the mock space shuttle and the rocket garden, the main part of the visitor center is built out something like the theme parks central Florida is so famous for. There are theatre attractions and “rides”, a restaurant and a huge gift shop, and here and there a few informative exhibits about NASA’s plans for the future.
The centerpiece of a tour of Kennedy Space Center is a three-stop bus ride onto the real estate of the complex. But the line is long — for us, more than an hour after lunch on a day when the center wasn’t very busy.
The first stop of the bus tour is an observation tower located some distance from the distinctive vertical assembly building and the two launch pads used to launch space shuttles. From this three-story tower, using the pay-per-view binoculars, one can sort of see the launch pads and some of the launch complex. Best for us here was the wildlife: wild pigs, alligators, raccoons and an armadillo. A line awaits to get back on a bus to move on.
The second stop of the bus tour, and the gem of the Kennedy Space Center, is a newly created museum of the Apollo moon-landing era. Inside the building, in addition to several other exhibit rooms and a theater (and another gift shop — it’s hard to get a five-year-old boy through a gift shop), are an Apollo capsule, a lunar lander and rover, and a mighty Saturn V rocket laid out on its side.
What an impressive vehicle. More than twice as tall as the space shuttle, the Saturn V is one of the most powerful machines ever made. The rocket was designed and built in the early 1960s under the direction of the famed German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun. Thirteen Saturn Vs were launched from Nov. 9, 1967 to May 14, 1973, taking men to the moon and establishing the United States first space station Skylab. That was more than thirty-five years ago now.
Nearing the end of our day, it just seemed like thirty-five years in line to get on a bus to push on to the third and final stop of the tour, a mini museum devoted to the International Space Station. Here, one can walk through several mock ups of ISS modules and have a look inside the large clean room where materials destined for the ISS are prepared for launch, and learn how badly NASA wants to “complete the space station.”
Then, another line to catch a final, sunset bus ride back to the visitor center.
If you visit the Kennedy Space Center, however, be sure to hit the Astronaut Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame was established by astronauts and is located about six miles off the main complex. It is a wonderful museum with a great collection of space memorabilia and a variety hands-on exhibits for kids young and old.
This column originally appeared in the Grand Haven Tribune on 2 January 2009.
