April 28 - May 2, 2023 -- Titusville, FL
We're still in Titusville at Manatee Hammock Campground. It's a county park and really quite nice. There's a dock and a great viewing area for the launches at Cape Canavaral. The large building in the center is the Vehicle Assembly Building where they assemble the NASA shuttles and rockets and then transport them to the launch pads.
On Friday we watched the launch of the SpaceX SES 03b mPOWER mission to medium-Earth orbit. It had a couple of satellites on board that it launched. We were about 10 miles away from the launch pad so it was hard to get pictures. John took a video and posted it on Facebook that turned out well. My pictures just look like a white spot on the horizon. It was really cool to see and hear though.
It was a beautiful evening to wait for the launch.
On Saturday we ran a couple of errands and then stayed in. We had a lot of rain and bad thunderstorms in the afternoon and evening.
Sunday we went to Kennedy Space Center. I bought the two day tickets, but after going I decided that it really could have been done in one day if we were there the whole day. We got there about 9:30 and left about 3:00 the first day.
This is what they call the Rocket Garden.
We took the bus tour first, which takes you buy the Vehicle Assembly Building and on to the Appollo/Saturn V Center. There we watched a couple of movies, one of which had a mock-up of mission control, and then saw the rockets.
We took the bus back to the main area and went to the Atlantis building. They had the space shuttle hanging from the ceiling.
They had a ride that I didn't go on and after John described it to me I was glad I didn't.
After some lunch we went to the Imax theatre and watched "The Last Man on the Moon", about Gene Cernan's experience. It's hard to believe that was in 1972.
My step-sister, Lisa, and her husband, Sid came up for dinner. We had a really nice time visiting.
Afterwards we went back out to the pier and watched the SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch the ViaSat-3 Americas. It had two satellites to be launched to a geostationary orbit. Many times they re-use the boosters, but these had been used several times before so they didn't bring them back and we weren't able to see them land on their targets. Again, from this distance it just looked like a ball of fire.
Monday we returned to Kennedy Space Center about 10:00. We went to the Heros and Legends building first. They also had a movie and then things for you to see.
From there we went to the Gateway building. Lots more space things to see. There was a ride in this building that John convinced me to go on. I wish he hadn't; I didn't care much for it. Afterwards we went to the Mars Rover building. They had some replicas of the Mars Rover Vehicles. It's truly amazing to think that these vehicles are up there on Mars. By noon we had seen everything we wanted to see so came back home.
The thunderstorms left early Sunday morning and the weather has been sunny and in the mid 80s. Our campsite has trees and it's really nice. My brother is coming over for dinner and I'm sure we'll enjoy his visit.
Roving on...
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth".
Genesis 1:1
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