Our Cake Topper

One of my absolute FAVORITE wedding things was our adorable cake topper! I just had to share when I found the link to all of our photos on the artist's Flickr page. Enjoy!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/iheartmilktea/page12/

Our Tree!

Here's our Christmas Tree! We got it Friday and have been adding to it all weekend. It's so beautiful!

Bus Tour- Part 1

When we were at KSC, everyone was talking about these bus tours... They were free, so we decided to give it a shot, and it was WELL worth it! Little did we know what we were about to see. The very guts of NASA would be before our eyes!

At the launch, I was all excited because I could see the VAB (vehicle assembly building). I took all these tiny little pictures of it, thinking this would be my only opportunity, but I was wrong!

The VAB is where they get every shuttle or rocket ready for launch. Did you know it's the fourth largest building in the world by volume? It is the largest single story building in the entire world!

Measuring 526 feet tall, 716 feet long, and 518 feet wide, the VAB covers 8 acres and encloses a massive 129,428,000 cubic feet of space. It was built in 1976 to allow for vertical assembly of the Saturn V rocket. This building was GIGANTIC!!!
The stars on the flag each measure 6 feet across, the blue part is the size of a basketball court, and each stripe is as wide as a road lane! The VAB is where the shuttle and it's boosters are assembled, standing straight up in launch position, then positioned to be wheeled to the launch pad on the crawler.

Our first stop was at Launch Complex 39. LC-39 had a fantastic view of every launch pad NASA had. Basically it was this 4 story tower you could climb and look all around.
For each view, there was a sign of what you were looking at. Then I took a picture of the actual view. Click photos to enlarge.

This is the launch pad that the shuttle took off from. I wish I'd have know how close you could be.
A few days before launch, they move away a stabilizing arm, in preparation for launch. People said at night it was breathtaking all lit up. It was VERY close to where we were standing on the viewing platform.

Launch pad B was a little farther away, but this was also where shuttles launched from.Still, the two launch pads were right here. It was interesting to me that they stored the liquid hydrogen and oxygen so close to a giant rocket! But hey, they're the engineers right?

This view was of the VAB and surrounding things. Including the MASSIVE crawler.

There was a Florida storm quickly moving in, in the distance. It rained a bit every day, but this storm turned out to be a torrential downpour!

The crawler was what the space shuttle was stood on to move it from the VAB to the launch pad. NASA has 2 crawlers, Hans and Franz (named after bodybuilders). Without anything loaded, the crawlers are already 3 stories tall! It is wide enough to take up an entire four lane freeway!

I've never seen anything SO huge! It moved very, very, very, slow (1 mph loaded, and 2 mph unloaded), all the way to the launch pad. It's gets only 32 feet per gallon of diesel!
Did you know the crawlers were created out of Marion, OH? The crawlers were built to last, and has been used since 1966 to move mostly everything we ever launched, including the tall Saturn V through the very last launch of Atlantis.

The Army Corps of Engineers has specifically designed the gravel you see that the crawler rolls on. It's hard to concoct something that doesn't sink under 18 million pounds! The crawler laser guided self leveling feature that will adjust the platform to keep the shuttle upright as it travels up a 5% grade hill to the launch pad. It was pretty cool to see in person.Inside the complex there was a giant shuttle main engine.See the flames!?! J/K, I used my imagination!

There were more tubes, wires, and switches, that I would ever know what to do with! It's amazing how all these little parts blasts a shuttle into space!

It was seriously so crazy how they figured out!Inside the complex, there was an interesting miniature display of a launch sequence. The shuttle was a very unique design, because it could be steered in space, and lands like a plane. However, it actually lands more like a glider, and can't really be controlled with any backfire to slow it on landing. This is why the shuttle comes in on an "S" shaped path, to slow down enough to be able to land and stop with a big parachute.So, say the shuttle made an emergency landing in White Sands, NM instead of making it all the way to Kennedy. How would the shuttle get back to Florida? On top of a plane!!! (I actually never knew that, or wondered)
Wouldn't it be nuts if you saw this fly by?!?!
Here's the display of the shuttle and launch sequence. Since regular people can't get anywhere near the actual launch pad, this was interesting to see how everything happened.
Ready for launch!
One of the most interesting things about the shuttle to me, are the heat shield panels. It is mind boggling how we discovered the materials that could withstand the heat reentering the atmosphere!
This diagram shows the places on the shuttle that it gets the hottest. We loved our first stop on the bus tour!

I Love My Husband!

On Sunday, I wasn't feeling very well, and was dying for some hot chocolate. We didn't have any mix in the house, or baking chocolate, so my sweet husband got to thinking and went to work! He melted 2 Hershey's chocolate bars and mixed it with milk to make the most delicious hot chocolate ever!!! I wouldn't recommend it for everyday life, due to the 2 chocolate bar thing, but as a treat or in an emergency, it was a brilliant idea!

Thanks Honey! You're a great husband!! Happy 1 month anniversary!! :o) XOXO!!!

Yes, I'm a Trekkie!!

So, one bonus was the Sci Fi summer collaboration they had going with Star Trek. I love Star Trek! They had a whole exhibit with all kinds of Star Trek props. It was so cool!

This is the Enterprise 1701-D. Star Trek the Next Generation was my favorite!

Welcome to engineering, and the engines were in the background. It was cool to be able to push all the buttons that controlled the ship!

We were flying just perfect on our visit. This diagram shows if anything is wrong with the ship. No problems to report.

Shuttle crafts are little mini spaceships the crew would go exploring with. This was a little mini display of different shuttle crafts. It was so cute!

Meet Lieutenant Worf. He's is a Klingon, and they had funny bumpy faces. Can you imaging having to wear this everyday at work?

And the biggest enemy of all?... THE BORG!!!!! They were really scary! They were heartless robot creatures that went around assimilating every race they came across into BORG monsters. They were very hard to stop, let alone destroy!

This Borg was charging up! It was really creepy to see this in person.

Here's a Borg's head. They had lots of tubes and devices so they could be controlled.

This costume was for the ships counselor, Troy. She was the only one who didn't wear traditional Star Trek uniforms.

Another one of her outfits.

Guinan, played by Whoopi Goldberg was the ship's bartender. Her planet was destroyed by the Borg, and she was rescued. She had a strange almost psychic ability that she sometimes used to help on missions or with problems.

And here's one of my favorite crew members, Data. He was an android who had super human abilities, and was on a life-long quest to understand and become more human.

This is Data's makeup. It was kinda creepy to see all these heads sitting everywhere.

After the Next Generation, (skipping over Deep Space Nine), my next favorite was Voyager. They got lost and were trying to find their way home. The Captain was Janeway, a woman, which was pretty cool. Here's her costume. She was tiny!

These displays were cool. They had all kinds of scanners...

And phasers...

This was the Enterprise's sick bay, see Lieutenant Worf standing there?

The medical doctor on board was Dr. Crusher. I was her for Halloween a long time ago, so I could dye my hair red! One of my first hair dying experiences! Although my mom made me use one of those old people rinses, and it didn't really change my hair much! I even got a very realistic Communicator!

I can't totally remember whose shuttle craft this was, I think it was Romulan.

And one of my very favorite characters, Captain Jean-Luc Picard. He was such a hero!

Robb was sitting in a Klingon Captain's chair!

And me too!

These are a bunch of other contries' phasers.

I likes this one, it showed all the Communicators throughout the years.

And here I am, in command of the original Enterprise! As you can see, my crew behind me, and I had a dress down day, but had the ship running along smoothly.

What a fun day in Star Trek land!