I wanted to go here for a very long time... Kennedy Space Center! This would probably be the closest to being an astronaut that I'll ever be!
Look at the astronauts on top of the ticket booths! How funny.
Oh my gosh, what was over there behind the trees? I was pretty excited to get in and find out!
When we first walked in, this giant mural was one of the first things we saw. It was a picture of the International Space Station (ISS) and all of the countries that participate with it.
STS-135 was the technical nickname for the last launch ever of Atlantis. It was pretty much everywhere as the name of the event. I think it's funny, because you'd think NASA would have a pretty scientific acronym , but STS simply stands for Space Transportation System. 135 means it's the one hundred thirty fifth mission.
The space station was basically built by our space shuttles. We're the only one with a cargo bay. The only one who could haul those big parts into space. So we sat next to this guy on the plane on the way home who was majorly inside the operations of the shuttle launches. In fact, he was playing to California in case it needed to emergency land there. He was telling us some facts that made it not good to cancel the shuttle program... He was saying, "what are we going to do if we need to bring one of these giant space station pieces back to Earth to fix it? No one else has anything even remotely capable of doing that. Didn't think of that when you cancelled the shuttle program? The biggest thing he was saying that the shuttle was out planets best defense against space. Not just in movies, this is an actual possible problem that could happen at any time! A giant asteroid that could destroy some of Earth, would only be able to be intercepted, and obliterated by bombs, transported by the shuttle. Again, cargo bay comes in real handy. This is only made possible by the way the shuttle is made like a plane, not a rocket. The very least they could've done was kept one operational in case of an emergency. It's not like they shuttle technology is in any way not state of the art. It's the most technologically advanced space vehicle in operation. Very strange to put the most incredible moving machine in all if human history in a museum forever." I agree. Anyways...
The first thing we did was go meet a real astronaut! Way a perfect way to begin the day...
Meet
Bruce. This guy (but much older) flew on 2 missions! LUCKY!
He was talking about how it feels to be launched, and about his second mission, STS-49, that was very dramatic.
Basically the entire mission's purpose was to "catch" a satalite never made it to it's correct orbit, and then launch it up to where it should be orbiting.
The crazy part was that they just couldn't grab it with a man attatched to the RMS, so the crew devised a plan. They really didn't want to fail their mission, so they told NASA they could do it with a 3 man space walk. NASA thought this was nuts, but NASA slept on it, the engineers checked the plans, and the next day three guys got the satellite, but simply going out, floating over, and grabbing it. The mission was a success!
This was a beautiful sunset over earth. You can see how thin and fragile our atmosphere is, our only protection from the harshness of space. Astronauts see this breathtaking sight, a sunrise, and sunset, every 90 minutes because of their extremely fast velocity.
Here's a picture on-board of one of the control stations.
Astronauts have to keep the shuttle at this angle during re-entry to have the heat shield bottom protect the rest of the ship from incinerating. Once they get to the regular atmosphere, they zig-zag down to decrease speed like a glider.
Here's his crew just after landing.
After his presentation, we got to personally meet Bruce and take a picture with him. He was a very nice guy, and I loved hearing about his mission.
Look at the astronauts on top of the ticket booths! How funny.
Oh my gosh, what was over there behind the trees? I was pretty excited to get in and find out!
When we first walked in, this giant mural was one of the first things we saw. It was a picture of the International Space Station (ISS) and all of the countries that participate with it.
STS-135 was the technical nickname for the last launch ever of Atlantis. It was pretty much everywhere as the name of the event. I think it's funny, because you'd think NASA would have a pretty scientific acronym , but STS simply stands for Space Transportation System. 135 means it's the one hundred thirty fifth mission.
The space station was basically built by our space shuttles. We're the only one with a cargo bay. The only one who could haul those big parts into space. So we sat next to this guy on the plane on the way home who was majorly inside the operations of the shuttle launches. In fact, he was playing to California in case it needed to emergency land there. He was telling us some facts that made it not good to cancel the shuttle program... He was saying, "what are we going to do if we need to bring one of these giant space station pieces back to Earth to fix it? No one else has anything even remotely capable of doing that. Didn't think of that when you cancelled the shuttle program? The biggest thing he was saying that the shuttle was out planets best defense against space. Not just in movies, this is an actual possible problem that could happen at any time! A giant asteroid that could destroy some of Earth, would only be able to be intercepted, and obliterated by bombs, transported by the shuttle. Again, cargo bay comes in real handy. This is only made possible by the way the shuttle is made like a plane, not a rocket. The very least they could've done was kept one operational in case of an emergency. It's not like they shuttle technology is in any way not state of the art. It's the most technologically advanced space vehicle in operation. Very strange to put the most incredible moving machine in all if human history in a museum forever." I agree. Anyways...
The first thing we did was go meet a real astronaut! Way a perfect way to begin the day...
Meet Bruce. This guy (but much older) flew on 2 missions! LUCKY! 
He was talking about how it feels to be launched, and about his second mission, STS-49, that was very dramatic.
Basically the entire mission's purpose was to "catch" a satalite never made it to it's correct orbit, and then launch it up to where it should be orbiting.
The crazy part was that they just couldn't grab it with a man attatched to the RMS, so the crew devised a plan. They really didn't want to fail their mission, so they told NASA they could do it with a 3 man space walk. NASA thought this was nuts, but NASA slept on it, the engineers checked the plans, and the next day three guys got the satellite, but simply going out, floating over, and grabbing it. The mission was a success!
This was a beautiful sunset over earth. You can see how thin and fragile our atmosphere is, our only protection from the harshness of space. Astronauts see this breathtaking sight, a sunrise, and sunset, every 90 minutes because of their extremely fast velocity.
Here's a picture on-board of one of the control stations.
Astronauts have to keep the shuttle at this angle during re-entry to have the heat shield bottom protect the rest of the ship from incinerating. Once they get to the regular atmosphere, they zig-zag down to decrease speed like a glider.
Here's his crew just after landing.
After his presentation, we got to personally meet Bruce and take a picture with him. He was a very nice guy, and I loved hearing about his mission.
1 comment:
SOO GLAD you got to live your Dream!! xo
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