Kennedy Space Center

I managed to piggy-back a little sightseeing onto a business trip to Florida, and today I got to visit the Kennedy Space Center and take the tour. This was a great tour, and is vastly upgraded from when I last visited here long ago at the end of the 1970s. The Visitor Center complex is in two parts and covers a lot of area. The parking lot is huge. I got there a little before the gates opened (right after they played the Star Spangled Banner), and spent about 7 hours going to just about everything there was to see. There was a bus tour that went past many points of interest including the huge vehicle assembly building (VAB) and pad 39A, which date to when I was here last. There was a lot of talk about getting ready for the next big program, Orion. From the main complex, the bus went to another center focused around the Apollo program and the Saturn V rocket. When I was last here, there was a Saturn V rocket laid out in stages along the path of the bus tour; now it’s inside this facility, beautifully displayed with lots of other things of interest, allowing you to look at it closely. There were also lots of short multimedia presentations in small theaters along the way that really set the stage for looking at things. I could probably have spent the whole day looking at the Saturn V. Back at the main complex, a highlight was a building featuring the actual space shuttle Atlantis, along with a lot of other things such as a replica of the Hubble space telescope, as well as the international space station. This was a really cool visit and I’m glad I made the time to go.