Today we drove over to the coast to Kennedy Space Centre, Baggage has been doing work on space exploration as part of her science school work and this is a very suitable field trip for the end of term, after all you always go on a field trip at the end of the summer term don’t you.
Space Shuttle Discovery is on the launch pad, it rolled out there last week in preparation for it’s launch at the end of August so we get a look at it from the observation gantry, though you do not get to see much as it’s launch tower is in the way and all you can really see is the top of the orange fuel tank. However it was still good to see it there getting ready for it’s launch, we will not be in Florida when it goes off, but after having seen it getting ready to depart I will try to track it's launch date and get Baggage to watch it go off over the Internet on the NASA site which streams all launches as they happen.
On the way out to the gantry where we looked at Discovery from we drove alongside the crawler roadway that is used to transfer the assembled shuttles from the assembly building out to the launch site, the impressions in the roadway being clearly visible even though the shuttle travelled over it a week before.
After having taken a good look at the tip of the tank from the gantry we continued on to the Saturn V centre where the focus is on the Apollo program and moon landings. It was 40 years ago this summer that man first landed on the moon and this is being commemorated in the centre with additional exhibits being on display from the NASA archives for the first time, it was good to go there and see some of these things that had been hidden away for so long. The exhibits included an array of prototypes for the suit for the moon walk, I guess that the suit that was worn has become part of our history so does not look out of place, some of these that were proposed and tested looked as if they would have been more at home in a 50s ‘B’ sci-fi movie.
After the Saturn V centre we headed back to the main visitors centre and watched one of the IMAX films and then took a walk in the rocket garden and paid a visit to the Robot Scouts exhibition before thinking about heading back to our house. It was a good day, we have been to the Kennedy Space Centre before, but the last time Baggage was there she was only 7 so did not remember much of it and it all came across as being new to her, she really enjoyed it, it was a pretty good field trip.
We got back to the house at 8:30, early enough to watch a bit of Torchwood before bed.
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