2/3/2022
The last few days I’ve been bumming around Florida. On the first I went to Daytona Beach. There isn’t much to do there unless you are there for an event. I checked out the Hard Rock and then went and walked the beach. At the end of the night I found The World’s Most Famous Brewery. I was just going to get a beer here then take off, but they had an open mic night for bands. That turned out to be a lot of fun.
Yesterday I went to the Daytona International Speedway to take a couple of pics then I made me way to Cocoa Beach. I was going to go to the space center today, but I didn’t have enough time to get through it so I went to the beach instead. I did stop at the SpaceX Launch and Landing control though.
I got up early today so i could do all of the Kennedy Space Center. As soon as you get in Rocket Park is on the left with the Heroes and Legends exhibit. Next I watched the future mars travel presentation. This was kind of dumb and really focused on kids. They did have replicas of the Mars rovers though. After that I went to the Space Shuttle Atlantis building. To get to the building you walk under the fuel tank and booster rockets for the shuttle. You walk into a presentation hall and they put a movie on. Then the screen comes up and you are face to face with the shuttle. On TV they don’t look very as huge as they really are. As I was leaving the building I overheard someone talk about a SpaceX launch. I looked and it was twenty minutes away from a launch. I rushed to the viewing area and found a spot to sit. They had a big screen with the YouTube feed of the launch so you could see it up close too. The viewing area was several miles away, but when the rocket launched you could feel the sound of the engines. It was really quite amazing.
After the launch I got on the bus to the Saturn V building. On the way we drove by the vehicle assembly building. This is one of the largest buildings in the world. It is incredibly big. The Saturn V exhibit was pretty much like the other two except they had one of the actual lunar landers that was planned for the moon. As you walk in you go through the actual command center for the Apollo missions. There was also the actual Apollo 14 capsule and samples of moon rocks. At the end of the exhibit they have a recreation of the Mercury command center.
We took the bus back to the visitors center and I had just enough time to do the Heroes and Legends exhibit and watch an Imax movie about asteroids. I can now say I’m one of the few people that have seen all three existing Saturn V’s in existence. Once I go back to CA I’ll have seen all of the shuttles too. I highly recommend visiting here if you are in the area. Especially if there is a launch happening. It’s kind of expensive, but I think it’s worth it.