18 January – Titusville

Kennedy Space Centre today!

Lots of security getting in, not surprising, but holds you up a bit. When we were through, the first thing you can see is “Rocket Garden”, with full scale mock ups of all the rockets. We headed straight to the bus tour that takes you around NASA and on to the Saturn V display.

Kennedy is a working space port, and it was interesting to drive past the launch pads and see the sheer scale of the space port. We went past the giant transporters on caterpillar treads that transport the rockets to the launch. The transporter weighs 2720 tonnes and the load capacity is 8160 tonnes. The trip to the launch pad is between 3-4 miles and takes the transporter 6-8 hours. They joked that employees walk in front of the transporters to relocate any turtles that are crawling toward the transporter. If they are walking away from it, they let them go, because the turtle will out walk the transporter.

Since the closure of the shuttle program, NASA uses Russian rockets to transport astronauts to the International Space station – each person costs $81M for the trip.

NASA has opened up the facilities to private companies. SpaceX has a 20 year lease on one of the launch pads and did 18 launches of the Falcon 9 in 2017. The new Falcon Heavy was on the launch pad, and will be doing an engine firing test this weekend. We were told that the Falcon Heavy is equivalent to 3 Falcon 9’s, so 27 engines. The payload on the launch is Elon Musk’s personal Tesla car. The first car to go into orbit…

We were dropped off at the Saturn V complex. We have seen the Saturn V at the Houston Space Centre, but it was still pretty impressive up close. A quick lunch at the café, then a bus back to the main complex. We saw an alligator on the river bank and the driver told us that one of the buildings had auto opening doors, and one day an alligator walked into the lobby. Since then, NASA have changed the angle of the sensor, so it only opens for people.

We then went to the Atlantis exhibit. It is very well done, with a lot of interactive displays and movies. Atlantis is hanging from the ceiling, and looks well used! They had a very sensitively displayed honour roll of the people lost in the Challenger and Columbia disasters, and information of the recovery process, and how they got the shuttle program back on track after.

We headed back to the van to get rugged up for the rocket launch. We started to queue at 4.30 for the 5.15 bus, as there were around 3000-4000 people bussing to the launch viewing area. The viewing area we went to was at the Saturn V complex, about 6 miles from the launch pad.

The launch was scheduled for 7.52 to 8.32pm. The Atlas rocket was launching a geo-stationery satellite, which will use radar to detect incoming missiles. It was headed for the Asia Pacific region and will join 4 others that are currently surveilling the earth.

At around 7.30 the launch was scrubbed due to a problem with a fuel tank drain valve. Back on the bus, it took until 8.30 to board just because of the sheer number of people. Disappointed!