You have to visit here sometime in your life! You get to see things up close and personal like mission control and space shuttles and one of the last surviving rockets from the Apollo Missions (Saturn V). You get to see the launch pads and the Vehicle Assembly Building and eat lunch with an astronaut. If Harry Potter's theme park is magical for your imagination, this place is magical for your reality!
Take your children to help build their dreams; take yourself to stand in awe of the things we were able to do with less technology than what sits in our pocket and sometimes makes phone calls. It's impossible to not want to become a scientist after leaving.
Check out some of the highlights of our trip to the Kennedy Space Center:
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| Replica of the fuel rocket which took the shuttle Atlantis up into orbit. |
The spaceship Atlantis was the last shuttle to launch into space out of the four that were created. It served 25 years on multiple missions and now rests inside its own building for all to see.
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| You can fit a tour bus (with room to spare) inside of here! |
A little selfie love with a replica of the Hubble Space Telescope.
This is a beanie cap - it is also the last thing to touch the spaceship Challenger before she took off.
This trip has a little extra special meaning to me in that it is what has sparked my torch in my future educational pursuits. It's the reason I'm going to the University of Wyoming and majoring in Geology. It's why I plan on spending nearly the entirety of my thirties in school. Because, on this trip, I met astronaut Robert Springer over lunch who taught our group about the criteria of becoming an astronaut - reviving a childhood dream I though long ago lost.
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| My first time seeing the Atlantic Ocean! |
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| Vehicle Assembly Building (where space shuttles are born) |
The stripes on the flag are eight feet across and the stars are each six feet tall. This is the largest painted American Flag in the world!
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| This "Crawler" moves at one mile per hour and transports shuttles to the launch pad. |
Standing beneath the Saturn V rocket. The Saturn V rocket breaks away into three pieces, but when all put together for lift off they equal the height of a 36 story tall building! This rocket series was used during the Lunar Apollo missions.
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| The Lunar Module (like the thing that landed them on the moon.) |
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| The Lunar Capsule - imagine fitting three men in there! |
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| Flight log for the lunar landing. |
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| Space suit exhibit. |
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| Space suit used during the lunar landing. |
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| Mercury Mission Control room exhibit. |
One of three souvenirs I took home with me. Salt and pepper shakers. My other two were a piece of a meteorite turned into a necklace pendant and a NASA t-shirt which is my all time favorite t-shirt!
Pro-Tip:
Just drive your rental out there and tour the place yourself.
The tour bus to and from is just not worth it and, as a whole, makes the whole day terribly rushed so we really didn't get to visit as much of the exhibits or even read the information on them as we would have liked. It was a "look, here it is. Ok now we gotta go" kind of tour.
We spent hours on a tour bus just driving "home" from the place that it nearly ruined the experience of the whole day. The recycled air of the bus was awful and the time between lunch and getting off the bus was upwards toward six hours with no food and no freedom of will to obtain it. I'll admit, we got super grumpy about the whole ordeal and were the last people to be dropped off. It was the most exhausting part of the trip.
But don't let that discourage you! Just drive out there and have an amazing time! The food for the lunch with an astronaut was delicious, buffet styled, and filling. The exhibits are inspiring. You won't want to miss this!
