After a day dedicated to Disney, our next stop was the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. One thing I really loved about it even before I started was that they had a kennel area, so I dropped Tamu off in an air conditioned space and knew that he was safe and cool while I took in what the complex had to offer. That would take the whole day.
My first stop was an IMAX film in 3D that set up the day spent exploring those who explore space. I participated in a multi-segment guided tour that lasted all day. The first part oriented us, then we had time to eat at the Orbit Cafe. Because we were only a few days ahead of Christmas, the crowd was not large and there were not a lot of kids. I had some time look at the rockets in the Constellation Sphere Plaza, which tells me that the tour and directions were great, as I really don’t know a whole lot about space and I was able to name some of the rockets at that point. One of the rockets was decorated for the holidays and there was Christmas music from the 50s playing over the plaza.
I hopped on a tour bus, and our group was driven around the launch pad and testing sites. We came back inside one of the buildings–likely the Launch Status Center–and I learned about a women’s program during the Mercury Project through displays, which then opened to a collection of the women astronauts. Then we visited launch control, which was built to endure a rocket explosion and also had an exhibit on the monkeys who were shot into space and then retired to the Palm Beach Zoo.
We wandered something that they called a Rocket Garden, which I loved, which contained the rockets with signs like trees at an arboretum. We saw the building where astronauts were launched in the early programs, and were reminded of Alan Shepard’s observation that he was relying on equipment that had been built by the lowest bidder. He and the other Mercury astronauts are memorialized in the Mercury Garden. In fact, the various cohorts are memorialized there with the appropriate Greek symbol and a collective monument, with markers for each individual.
The guide was great at sharing lore from the place, from O’Malley, who got lost trying to navigate the classified site without lights at night, to Grissom, White, and Chaffee who died at Launch Complex 34 in January 1967. The site where they died has been largely abandoned.
Then we saw the capsules for re-entry and the van that transports astronauts to the launch. We had time at the end to wander the full museum and take in the shops. I enjoyed a simulation and wandered among capsules.
The afternoon turned to evening, and I walked through the Astronaut memorial as the sun set, which contains the Apollo 1 trio, as well as the crews aboard the Challenger and Columbia. It also includes a memorial wall with pictures and bios of those who died in accidents related to the space program, but not in space itself. It was beautiful and sad.
When it was closing for the day, I retrieved me excited dog. It had been a full and enjoyable day and we pressed further south in dark Florida night.