The Kennedy Space Center is home to most of the important NASA stuff with the exception of Mission Control which for political reasons is located in Houston at Lyndon B Johnson (aka Kennedy's Texan Vice President) Space Center. Cape Canaveral is apparently a really sweet place to blast rockets into space because it's unpopulated, flat and right next to the ocean meaning that there's plenty of options for aborted landings.
The US ended its shuttle program earlier in the year and a bunch of NASA types are being laid off (and contracted back at higher rates of course... remember this is the public sector), but there was still plenty to see. A bus tour took us around all the important sites, starting with a view of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Base (not part of NASA, but where all the Gemini and Mercury missions departed from).
The highlight of the tour was a trip to the Vehicle Assembly Building (above) where the shuttles were prepared for launch by dangling them from the ceiling and strapping them to big cans of fuel. The building is deceptively large - currently it's the largest single story building in the world, and when it was built was the largest building by volume in the world. For perspective, the blue area on the flag is the size of a basketball court and the stripes are each the width of a road lane. Basically, it's huge. Tours have only just started going to the building this month, our visit was part of a "soft launch" (pun probably intended) of the new route. Inside we were shepherded around by security guards to see a real live space shuttle - Endeavour.
The shuttles are being prepared for their next launch, which will see them strapped to the top of a 747. Destination: museums in LA and Washington DC. In the good old days, they would have left under their own steam from the pad below. Again, it looks little and far away, but this thing was massive. The tower on the right was filled with water which was dumped onto the pad seconds prior to take off to dampen the sound. Nearby we saw alligators, turtles, and a manatee cruising about the swamp.
The last stop on the tour was the Saturn V rocket exhibition - a spare Apollo era rocket which is huge and impressive, but we had already seen its twin in Houston last year. Back to the visitor centre and around the various memorabilia exhibits - space suits, boots, bits of moon, launch control, etc.
And finally, a personal tour of the "rocket garden" from a very enthusiastic and knowledgeable chap who told us about the various instances of reckless disregard for safety that eventually led to Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. The best story involved the red tipped rocked in the distance below, sent into space with a chimp called Ham aboard. The mission was a success with Ham pressing a couple of levers before splashing down into the ocean to be rescued by boat later that day. Unfortunately, the system used to reward and punish Ham for good or bad behaviour malfunctioned and he received numerous electric shocks to his feet for doing nothing. Our guide explained that the capsule was about to sink when it was finally picked up and happily declared that "we saved his life". Yeah... that's exactly what you did.
We finished the day with a short drive to Disneyworld near Orlando. We stayed in a Disney hotel, right in the thick of it, and spent the evening at Disney's version of an Irish pub, preparing our game plan for the next day.
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