Kennedy Space Center

I promised more information about the Space Center. How about a test instead? See if you can remember the names of these astronauts! We had two good days at the complex. It’s huge. The buildings are huge. The rockets are huge. Looks just like it does on TV. It would have been a lot more interesting with a Space Shuttle ready to launch, but it’s up at the International Space Station at the moment. There are several really interesting movies to watch at the visitor center—one about walking on the moon, and one about the space station. Great bus tour too that takes you from the huge building where they work on the shuttle and the rockets, then out to the launch pad. Gene was in heaven in a place they call the rocket garden—lots of old rockets from Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions, including the Saturn 1B. We saw the Saturn 5 inside one of the buildings—it’s the biggest things we’ve sent up…2 football fields high (Statue of Liberty times 1 and ½).

Here's a cool timeline of the history of flight and our family:

1898-Gran was born

1903-First powered flight-Wilbur and Orville Wright

1926-First liquid powered rocket flight-Robert Goddard

1948 and 1953-Gene and I were born

1957-Sputnik-Russia orbits first space satellite

1961-First American in space-Alan B. Shepard, Jr.

1965-Gemini 6-first rendezvous and docking in space

1969-Apollo 11-First human to land on the moon-Neil A. Armstrong

1973-Skylab-First space station

1975-Apollo-Soyuz-First link up in space-Apollo-Soyuz test project

Look what happened during our lifetimes! Gran's lifetime really saw a lot of changes!