The day has dawned rather grey for Florida, but still, we’re on our way to do bucket list stuff!!
And today’s is an exciting one for the husband, space nerd that he is, as we’re visiting the Kennedy Space Centre!!
Home to a huge visitor’s centre where you can get close to a huge array of space related stuff.
Plus it’s also still a working NASA base too.
Below is one of the worlds most iconic time pieces. NASA’s launch clock for years ticked down the hours, minutes and seconds remaining to the next launch.
It stood for more than four decades outside the press centre and now sits at the visitor centre’s entrance.
Below is the Rocket Garden. It is home to real rockets including those that launched NASA’s Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs into space.
Delving further into deep space exploration we’re heading to see some mega structures.
The imposing entrance to the Atlantis space shuttle is a full-scale space shuttle stack of two solid rocket boosters and orange external tank.
Atlantis is a retired Space Shuttle orbiter whose maiden voyage was October 3, 1985.
By the end of its final mission, Atlantis had orbited the Earth a total of 4,848 times, traveling nearly 126,000,000 miles!
Atlantis is displayed with its payload bay doors opened and mounted at an angle to give the appearance of being in orbit around the Earth.
You can get a little taste of space life with an out of this world toilet, the vehicle that took astronauts to their rockets and a mock up of the inside of a space shuttle.
Then we’re taking a bus trip to the actual working section of NASA and we sail past the biggest set of doors in the entire world!!
This is the Vehicle Assembly Building where the rockets are wheeled out and ready to take to their launch pads.
Each of the four doors is 456 feet (139 metres) high!!
Below is the actual console that was used during the first crewed NASA mission to orbit the Moon in 1968 on the Saturn V rocket.
An interactive exhibition takes you through the launch in real time as the iconic NASA clock counts down the minutes till takeoff.
Then we get to see one of the actual real Saturn V rockets, the type of rocket that launched humans to the Moon.
The scale of it has to be seen to be believed, it just goes on and on!!
Below is an reconstruction of the lunar landing, and I get to TOUCH MOON ROCK!!
Below we get to walk across part of the actual gantry that the moon mission astronauts crossed to board their rocket.
Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins walked across this red grate swing arm to begin the first moon landing mission over 50 years ago.
And here is a statue to commemorate the incredible achievements of those three men.
In the distance (if you squint) you can see the actual launch pads where iconic missions, including the Apollo 11 moon landing, blazed a trail into outer space.
It was a fantastic day all in all, and one that left me surprisingly emotional.
There’s something about being up close to these huge machines, that have broken free of our atmosphere, and hurtled through the darkness of space itself, that really makes you feel small.