"Orlando's worlds" - Kennedy Space Center

The best  in Orlando is undoubtedly the visit of the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. This is a must do. The special guided tour took us to the main launching pad. This pad is where most space rockets to the moon and space shuttles took of. As the guide said it, this is the only place where humans left earth to land on another heavenly object. Quite impressive!

The shape and details of the pad are very specific - nothing is left to chance. There is even a complex system involving lots of water meant to stop the noise from making the platform shake! There is liquid hydrogen, if I remember well, to fill the huge tanks at the side of the shuttle.

We even got to go below the launching pad... We see the two holes through which most of the fuel is evacuated upon lift off. The ground there is completely burnt. It also gives an even better sense of the sheer size of the pad.

This is the hangar where the shuttles and rockets are prepared, before being dragged to the launching pad. NASA likes to say that it is the largest single-store building in the world! On the right is the command room. This is where the countdown is done.

At the Kennedy Space Center, one gets a good sense of the different rockets and space crafts. Usefully, the Christmas tree helps with the dimensions.

On the contrary, the capsule of Apollo XIV is rather small. With the building of the International Space Station, there is now more space in space for astronauts to move around. The movie about life on board the Station was revealing, but it certainly did not motivate me to become a space walker. Afraid of heights, try walking in space with the whole earth moving below you...

The tour also took us to a reconstructed control room.

Lastly, I had to put a picture of a sample of moon's soil. Next objective: planet mars ?