Today, we blasted off into the wonderful world of NASA! We spent the day at Kennedy Space Center, and we had a great time.

Michelle had always wanted to visit this complex, and we thoroughly enjoyed seeing the history of our space exploration agency and learning more about where we might be going later on as we continue look to the stars.

We saw an IMAX film on the International Space Station, which is being built currently and added to by 14 countries. We also experienced what a Space Shuttle launch is like in a huge simulator that shook, rattled, and rolled us through a launch sequence. We took a bus over to see the 2 launching pads and location of storage and build out for the space shuttle. The cool thing was that the 2 pads currently in use are the same ones they've been using since they sent the Saturn V rockets of the Apollo missions to the moon. We also saw the Saturn V itself, and I was surprise at how huge it was.

We learned about robots in space, Mars exploration, and the original struggles and triumphs faced in the "space race" and the Lunar missions. We also got to see the Space Shuttle Atlantis poised and ready for her October launch on launch pad B, and we saw the "crawler" coming back to it's home base after the delivery. These really are monster machines and amazing feats of technological advance.

I wasn't aware of this, but NASA is currently planning additional manned missions back to the moon (first since the Apollo program ended in 1972), plus manned missions to Mars and beyond. Pretty cool stuff.

It seems that our culture of high tech CGI in movies is less interested in the fact that we actually send people up into space and bring them back safely, but I was amazed at all that goes into making that happen.

If you get a chance, take a visit to the KSC.

We're so excited, on to see the MOUSE tomorrow! We've decided as a family to take a true vacation for the 10 days we're at Disney World/Universal, so I'll be limiting my work hours to email and maint stuff at night, and no school work for the kids. We'll keep the blog moderately updated as well, but won't re-engage fully until we're on our way to Charleston on the 20th.

Faith's blog:
Today we went to the Kennedy Space Center where they have launched many of the rockets that have been launched. The space center was named after our 35^th president John F. Kennedy. They have been sending robots to Mars to see if humans can live on Mars. I don’t know if we can but, there is life on Mars though. (water, plants)

Kenzie's blog:
I loved seeing the Kennedy Space Center. My favorite part was touching the moon! There was a moon rock that we could touch. We also saw a spaceship that has been in space. There were some rockets too. We took a bus tour that showed us a spaceship that is going to take off soon! It was fun!


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Kennedy Space Center

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