Kennedy Space Centre: It's worth the Hype

At the Kennedy Space Centre Visitor Complex they have chain link fences surrounding the Assembly Building. It's arced back to prevent alligators from scaling them. We even see one in the banks on the bus trip down.

The doors to the assembly building are the biggest doors in the world. Inside it's big enough to house 250 billion ping pong balls. I'm not sure why some stats stay with you, and most don't. I'm still hazy on the year The Challenger crashed and exactly how many astronauts died. The Netflix series on that is truly amazing and I highly recommend it..

You might be wondering why I'm writing about the Kennedy Space Centre exclusively as a travel feature, and not including it in some glib listicle on things to do in Orlando. Primarily because this blog serves more as a diary, with thanks to Carl for allowing me to post my entrees here.

Also you might want to think about planning an entire day for the visit to the Kennedy Centre and putting it at the top of the list, because it's important to realise the ambition of the impossible. Indeed the word Impossible is not even spoken in NASA. And once you get to appreciate the many obstacles that were overcome by scientists, physicists, mathematicians, engineers, pilots, astronauts etc, you might also imbibe the same philosophy. Nothing is impossible.

And we're going back to the moon! That should excite the naysayers and disbelievers like Joe Rogan. You know we didn't just go to the moon once, we went several times. In fact, during nine Apollo missions, 24 astronauts (all Americans) went to the Moon, and 12 of them walked on it.

Once you realize the scope of what was involved with the Apollo missions, you'd never accept the theory that we didn't go to the moon because of the sheer scope. The amount of people that were involved that would have to keep that under wraps. They don't even mention it at the facility, and why would they. Why give that the oxygen of publicity.

If you are thinking of making a visit please take your family. There is plenty for the young kids to enjoy and its important they too get to embrace the magnitude of man's achievements.

The rocket garden tour is great. And you'll find most things are included with the admission ticket, $75 for an adult. Including the bus tour, the simulator experience in the Gateway, you can walk the same gantry as the astronauts did in the Apollo 8 mission. Visit the Mars centre and inspect the Mars Rovers. There is a drone on Mars that has a small piece taken from the first Wright Brothers plane attached to it. How very cool is that?

In the IMAX theatre (also included) you'll learn about the James Webb Telescope that goes beyond the Hubble Telescope to zero in on Galaxies and potential planets that could have water. Of course, where there is water there could be life. Learn more about those in an article from The University of Chicago here.

The food is pretty ordinary, but passable. You'll spend the entire day there and not get bored. Parking is circa $15 bucks but no queues and very close to the facility.

If you're heading back to Orlando after like we did I recommend stopping off at Cooper's Hawk Wine and restaurant. The black ahi tuna and the fillet mignon was outstanding and inexpensive.

Photo by History in HD on Unsplash