And I think to myself, what a wonderful world!

My trip to Orlando, Florida, over Christmas and New Year included a visit to the Kennedy

Space Center.

The east coast of Florida is protected from the Atlantic Ocean by barrier islands, long narrow islands mainly made of sand and silt. Between the islands and the mainland are lagoons. About 60 miles east of Orlando is Cape Canaveral. It was here that the Americans chose to site their space launch facility in the late 1950s and it is still the only place on American soil that launches space vehicles.

There are a number of reasons the location was chosen. First and foremost, it is very deserted, a long way from any big city, in the middle of swampland. There isn't even any good agricultural land nearby. This is important in case of any accidents or explosions. Secondly it is beside the sea which means that much of the flight path of the rockets will be over the sea rather than over land, which is good when you have to dispose of a rocket stage by dumping it. Finally, it is about as far south as you can go in mainland USA; the closer to the equator the better when launching rockets, as the rotation speed of the Earth is faster and this helps launch the rocket.

The Kennedy Space Center is NASA's launch centre. Confusingly, there are actually two islands: the one which includes the Cape itself is not owned by NASA but by the American Air Force, while Merritt Island, separated from it by the lagoon known as Banana River, is owned by NASA. Both islands are used for launches. We'll gloss over this and treat the whole caboodle as one big facility, as that is what the tourist encounters.

There's a lot to see at the Kennedy Space Center, and you'll need a full day to appreciate the best parts. Tickets are quite expensive, and if you take in a guided tour as we did, you'll end up paying about $75 for your day in admission charges.

There are two main things that go on at the Cape at the moment: space shuttle launches and unmanned rocket launches. The space shuttle launches are all done from the Kennedy Space Center, which has an assembly building, two launch pads, a landing runway for when the space
shuttle returns to Earth, and vehicle refurbishment buildings for 'recycling' the shuttles.

The unmanned launches all take place from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Base. They are used for putting satellites into orbit, and for sending exploratory robotic missions, for example to investigate Mercury or to measure the flux from the north pole of the Sun.

Also at the Cape, you'll find the memory of Apollo hanging over everything. It was from here that men went to the moon in one of the most remarkable achievements of mankind. Early Apollo flights were from the Air Force Base, while later ones were from the Kennedy Space Center.

As you drive across the long causeway to Merritt Island, you'll begin to realise how out of the way and isolated a spot this is. There's nothing here but some assorted wildlife and the Space industry. You'll soon arrive at the visitor centre. There was a very lax security check on the way in. Some of us were asked to turn on our mobile phones to prove they were phones, to play some music on the iPods and so on. Others weren't even asked to open their bags.

In the Visitor Centre itself, there is:

• The Shuttle Launch Experience, which tries to simulate a shuttle launch using a combination of moving chairs and a movie. 'Not very impressive' was the verdict of those of our party which tried it.

• The IMAX Theatre which was showing a very interesting 3-D Movie on what it was like to actually be on the moon's surface for the 12 astronauts which experienced it. Excellent.

• The Rocket Garden, a peaceful outdoor area where many of the rockets built for the program over the years are standing. You can wander around and look at them.

• Lunch with an Astronaut. You can actually eat with and talk with astronauts. We didn't try this but it sounds good. Be sure to reserve well in advance.

A short bus ride will bring you to:

One of the best things to see at Kennedy Space Center is the museum to the Apollo program. The tour of the museum begins with you being herded into a large room where a brief video is shown.

Then you're brought to a room which recreates the control room for the launch of Apollo 8, the first mission to leave Earth orbit. Apollo 8, with its flight crew of three, travelled to the moon, orbited around it and returned to earth. Astronauts Borman, Lovell and Anders became the first humans to leave the Earth and fly around the back of the moon where they were completely cut off from Earth contact. They were the first to see the strange landscape of the moon's far side, and were the first to see the Earth rise above the moon's grey surface. The photo they brought back of our fragile blue planet in the immensity of space has truly become a part of our consciousness now.

The Apollo 8 control room is impressive and made more so by the fact that this is the actual equipment that was used, although it has been moved to the museum. A simulation of the full launch sequence takes place.

Then you move into the main hall of the museum. Hanging above your head is the museum's most impressive exhibit - a genuine Saturn V rocket, the type that brought those men to the moon. It is the largest and most powerful rocket ever built. This one was never used, as the missions to the Moon were cancelled rather suddenly. It dominates the hall, almost filling it, hanging over the heads of the people. Also in the main hall are some other smaller exhibits including a piece of rock from the moon which you are allowed to touch, and examples of the suits the astronauts wore, and a mock-up of the inside of the rocket to show you how little space they had.

The Lunar Theater, just off the main hall, shows a presentation of the first moon landing, when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon with only seven seconds worth of fuel left in the tanks - genuinely exciting and inspirational.

There's a cafe serving reasonable food here, and a small gift shop.

There are two guided tours of the Cape available. One was the "Cape Canaveral: Then & Now" tour, which visits the unmanned rocket launch sites. The other, and the one we went on, was "NASA Up-Close". This takes you out to the assembly building, the shuttle launch pads, the landing runway and the rehabilitation buildings. Admittedly you don't get to go into any of the buildings, but even seeing them at a few hundred yards' distance is fascinating. There are a few stops along the way for photo opportunities, and the guide explains everything in as much detail as anybody could want. He also showed us some alligators.

The space shuttles are built in the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), which is one of the biggest buildings in the world. It's basically a cube 525 feet high. The shuttles are built inside standing up, as were the Saturn V's before them. The doors on the VAB are the tallest in the world, being able to take a full Saturn V standing upright through them. At one stage it was thought that the rockets could be built lying down and then hoisted into a vertical position, but the strains induced on the hull were too much, so they settled on building them standing up. This meant that they had to transport them from the building to the launchpad standing up. NASA designed a wonderful machine known as a crawler. This is basically a moving platform which can drive along while keeping the platform absolutely level, so that the rocket doesn't fall over. It takes the crawler about six hours to drive the three or four miles to the launchpad.

NASA has two launchpads, 39A and 39B. These were built for the Apollo program but have been adapted for the Shuttle. Shuttle launches take place fairly regularly and visitors are allowed watch from a safe distance of about five miles away. There are grandstands all around the area.

The only people actually present at the launch itself are the astronauts. Fire services stay about a mile away and everyone else is at least three miles away for safety. In the event of an emergency, the astronauts can slide down a wire which takes them to a point on the ground where they can climb into an armoured car and drive to safety or they can hole themselves up in a bunker and way for everything to blow over. In a successful launch, the shuttle is sitting on top of a trench filled with water. The water absorbs the impact of the engines and prevents a shock wave reflecting back off the ground and destroying the rocket. But the water evaporates rather quickly so the pool is kept topped up by a giant water tank which can deliver millions of gallons of water to the launchpad in just a few seconds.

Shuttles are theoretically re-usable. The central plane-like part, known as the orbiter, lands on a runway just 4 miles from where it took off. This is one of the longest runways in the world, as the shuttle is going much faster when it touches down than a normal commercial
aeroplane.

Finally, the orbiter must be 'recycled'. All the parts of it are inspected and replaced if necessary. NASA still call this re-usable, while some claim that so much of it is replaced in the process that it is effectively a new rocket being built each time. We were shown the buildings where this takes place, but they were just metal clad boxes from the outside.

The Guided Tour then gave us the option of visiting the centre where components for the International Space Station are assembled, but we declined. We'd seen enough for the day.

There's also an Astronaut Hall of Fame which has much memorabilia from all the missions, including the command module of Apollo 14 which went all the way to the moon and back. We didn't get a chance to visit it.

There are 'space camps' where you can experience some of the training that an astronaut receives.

The space shuttle programme is almost finished. There are only a few more launches planned and then the programme will be brought to a close. But this isn't the end of American space flight. The Orion mission is about to start. This will be a rocket-based programme, similar to Apollo. The destination? Initially the Moon, but ultimately Mars. The challenges of sending people to the Red Planet make the Moon mission seem trivial; mankind benefited hugely from the journey to the moon—virtually the whole of modern electronics and computer science were indirect spin-offs. Who knows what we'll learn about ourselves when we start working out how to keep humans alive in a sealed environment for the year or two necessary to get to Mars?

All in all, the trip to see NASA was one of the most interesting days I've spent in a long time, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in space research.

Gnomon

05.02.09 Front Page

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