Kennedy Space Centre

Wednesday 27th October 


Kennedy Space Centre

The Centre was absolutely fantastic, not only was it interesting but everything ran like clockwork ie bus trip, guided tour, shows, films and talks.

The morning started with a tour of the Rocket Garden otherwise known as the Garden of Remembrance for past rockets.  

Wonderful to see Mercury, Gemini and Apollo in all their glory.

Went on a 2 hour bus trip around some of the 14,000 acres of park.  Everyone was very excited about the upcoming Discovery Space Shuttle Launch scheduled to take off in 5 days time.

Lucky for us the huge doors of the Vehicle Assembly Building were open and we watched 2 solid fuel rocket boosters (for Discovery) come out very slowly on the crawler transporter.

Mission Control Centre – walked inside the actual Mission Control Centre and could see exactly how the consoles were left after launch of Apollo 11 and the first Moon landing in 1969.  Listened to the original commentary between the astronauts and the Control Centre.  

IMAX Theatre – saw 2 breathtaking special effects movies.  One was called Space Station 3D that explained what life would be like “weightless” (sounds good eh?) and how the astronauts cope with living and working for months in space.  Hubble gave us the chance to peek through the Hubble Space Telescope and see the vibrant colours and images in space. 

Space Shuttle Simulator 

Al bravely went where no Aussie has ever gone before.  He went in a

space shuttle that traveled 17,500 miles per hour,  I watched him from the Observation Tower (yes I’m chicken).

  I think the G-force got the better of him when his cheeks shot up over his forehead!!  So glad I didn’t try it.  haha

In the evening we went to a Tops in Blue Concert at the Space Centre, the stage was just in front of the Rocket Garden.    It was a gorgeous warm night and it looked awesome having all the rockets lit up in the background.

We thoroughly enjoyed the 3 hour gala performance (all free).  The artists perform all around the world entertaining the military personnel and their families.    Outstanding singing and dancing and the laser light show was fantastic.