Kennedy Space Center


Today was another return visit, this time to the Kennedy Space Center.  It was a perfect tourist day: warm and sunny but not too warm.  We were none of us able to understand the driver of the bus from the visitor centre to  the site itself but, that apart, it was very successful.  The whole enterprise was a splendid achievement of which NASA are rightly very proud.
We saw the original control room, an Atlas 5, the Atlantis Space Shuttle and lots of lesser exhibits.  Interestingly the rocket engines haven’t changed in concept from the days of the V-2: liquid fuel pumped at a vast rate into jet nozzle with an oxidiser.   They’ve just got bigger!







We had a chat with a 'docent' who was a retired engineer who had worked on the Atlas 1A project. He had been a systems engineer working on propulsion systems: engines and hydraulics principally.  He likened a rocket liftoff to balancing a broom in the palm of your hand.

Here are a couple more photos.

Can you guess what this is? It’s a toilet for astronauts  to use.






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