January 9 and 10
Yesterday we had some of my mom’s family over. Her dad’s cousin Candace came as well as Candace’s son Tim, his wife Jennifer, and their kid’s Zoe, Brenton, and Hunter. It was nice to see family again, since we never get to see my mom’s side of the family much. Zoe is a doll, she was really shy at first but we spoiled her so she warmed up to us pretty quick. James got to play with Hunter who is his age so he was really excited about that. Dad mad beef stew which was delicious of course, and we made dumplings to go on top. I bought a roll of cookie dough and made some chocolate chip cookies. They stayed the whole afternoon and after they left we went out to west marine for some parts.
Today we got up early and went to the Kennedy Space Center. It was so exciting! First we went to an IMAX 3D movie about the International Space Station. That was pretty funny and you got to see how the astronauts and cosmonauts lived and worked in space. They each had a small room that was probably no bigger then 3 feet by 2 feet. They slept upright in a kind of sleeping bag and they had a desk with a laptop. A lot of them brought pictures to hang up in their rooms. The storage was very cool as well. They basically just had bags of supplies and things strapped to the walls. There were bags of water that weighed a hundred pounds and they could just bounce them around with the touch of a finger.
After the movie we went on a Space Shuttle Launch simulator. This was one of the most exciting parts of the day. We waited in line, then went into a briefing room and learned about how the shuttle launches. This was interesting because it wasn’t your typical boring information video. They had three large screens and two small ones that moved and all the screens sort of interacted, and it was funny too! After that we go into another room and wait in another line and then go into the ‘Shuttle.’ After we’re strapped in, the shuttle is turned vertically. Now we’re laying on our backs in chairs and the countdown starts. It gets very shaky and you feel like you’re actually moving upwards. After we get into ‘space’ the shuttle becomes horizontal again and we leave.
We brought a lunch from home and ate in the cafeteria there and then went on the bus tour. The bus tour first brings you to an exhibit inside the KSC and you learn about the shuttles and go up into an observatory to see the space center from a bird’s eye view. The next stop on the tour you learn about the Apollo missions. It starts off with a film about the Gemini and Apollo Missions and then you go into the mission control room that contains all the actual desks from mission control for the Apollo missions. They have screens that show a launch and the ‘windows’ in the back of the room actually vibrate and are covered in a dusty red haze. From there we went into a room that has some more information about the missions and astronauts. We skipped the last stop, which we’ll save for next time, and went back to the visitor complex because it had already been 2 hours.
We walked around for a bit and went into a somewhat cheesy robots exhibit that basically just talks about different robots in space and how we would live on mars. After having such real experiences all day this was a bit of a letdown. We went to another IMAX 3D movie, this time about the moon. This was very interesting, and so entertaining. It talked about how the astronauts explored the moon and what they did every day. It also sort of predicted that someday we’ll have colonies on the south pole of the moon. This could be true considering we now know that there is ice on the moon. Finally we walked around a bit outside but it was very cold and windy still so we came back to the boat. I had been walking up to the bathrooms and saw a huge ray that was about a foot or a foot and a half wide! It was so cool, and I wish I had had a camera with me. We’re just getting ready to have calzones for dinner that Dad and James made. They smell so good!
