Torrential Raines: Family Day at KSC

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Family Day at KSC

11:23 AM | Posted by Danielle | | Edit Post

It was Family Day again at KSC! Last time we went was either late 2008 or early 2009. This time Matt's parents came down to take the tour with us. We spent a full day there with the first 2 hours in the car driving to see the shuttle on the launch pad. Eamon and Jack spent the time hopping from one seat to the other (we were going like 2 mph so they didn't have to sit in their car seats the whole time) and crawling all over me in the back of "Murray" - my beloved station wagon. The boys did great with only a minor meltdown before we went to see the other shuttle in the hanger.... it was lunch and naptime. What else do you expect from a tired 2 year old?

I hope you enjoy the pictures. I'm going to include some facts about KSC and the shuttles from a fact sheet I got on the visit. Don't die from boredom, please. Just kidding! This time the trip was fun and interesting. Maybe space is growing on me a little bit..

Facts about Kennedy Space Center:

employee a little less than 15,000! You can imagine the effect on our local economy if space exploration is canceled.
220 square miles

Space Shuttle Discovery on the launch pad 39

122 feet long
78 ft wingspan
cost 1.7 Billion dollars to build it - in today's dollar that would be $3.4 Billion

Discovery and the crawler on the right. The crawler is what moves the shuttle from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch pad. More info on that later. The pebble road you see in the foreground (and there's a second road in the middle ground) is actually the road for the crawler's tracks.

Picture from behind the launch pad. On the left is the hydrogen tank and on the right is the water tower.

You can't see it in the picture but there is a 42 ft deep flame trench surrounding the launch pad
water tower holds 300K gallons of water and dumps all the water out in 20 seconds
The flame trench is flooded with water to reduce the sound of the lift off
It gets to be about 4,000 degree F in there
You can just barely see it, but there's an 80 ft lightning mast sticking off the top of the launch tower

In this picture you can see the top of the flame trench (the part in sand) and the lightning mast

The back of the shuttle. The orange part is the external tank and the two white cylinders on either side are the solid rocket boosters.

External tank holds 383K gallons of fuel
Weighs 65,500 lbs when filled, 58,500 when empty
It's delivered by barge from Louisiana
Solid rocket boosters are 149 ft long and hold 1 million pounds of fuel
Delivered by rail from Utah.

Here we are in front of the Vehicle Assembly Building

It's over 200 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty and 30 feet shorter than the Washington Monument
It cover 8 acres!
The volume of the building is so vast that it creates its own weather and even produces rain clouds on humid days http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_Assembly_Building

Walking into the VAB

Jack and Eamon said HI!

At first glance you might think that I need to change the orientation of this picture. This is looking straight up into the VAB from the ground. Massive!

Can you believe Jack is actually sitting in the stroller? He really loves that stroller.

Jack likes wheels. This wheel is an ACTUAL wheel from a space shuttle.

Huge thing-a-ma-bob

Jack knows the names of all the different types of construction trucks out there: Digger, bulldozer, cement mixer, forklift. He called this a cherry picker. He was really excited to be in the cherry picker basket. Check out his shirt: It says "My lil bro is 1"

My nostrils at the back of the VAB. Seriously, you have no idea how big this building truly is. When we lived in Cocoa we could actually see the building from the bridge. It's a 25 minute drive.

This is the front of the VAB. (Can you tell I'm fascinated with this building?)

When the flag was first painted on there in 1976, it was the largest flag in the world. The NASA emblem was just recently painted in 1998 (okay, 12 years ago is not so recent) and replaced the US Bicentennial Star logo.
Each painted star has a 6 foot diameter and the stripes are 11 feet wide

Next we got to sign the banner for the next Shuttle Mission Endeavour in November

Jack wanted to use the "color"

Next we went to the OPF. Here's some info:

This is where they remove residual fuel/explosives from the shuttle after landing, repair and replace TPS (the little tiles on the shuttle), and service the vehicle
Shuttle spends 3 months here

This is where Jack had his 1 meltdown. Running on the train tracks made it all better.

He fell running on the road here and got a scratch on his arm. He tells anyone who looks in his direction about his "booboo from Daddy's work with the space shuttle"

E is ready for a nap

"Going to see the SPACE SHUTTLE!"

Oohhh ahhh. Matt told Jack "this is where the fire comes out." Jack said "Want to touch fire!" Oh geez

Under the shuttle. All those squares are the tiles that protect the shuttle from the immense heat when landing. There are 24,000 tiles on the shuttle. On one of the displays here you could touch the tile on one side and on the other side there was a heat lamp. The temperature got up to 400 degree F and the tile barely felt warm. Way to go, engineers!

Up close

I made Mary go stand under it and take the picture. Hence her "I don't want to be standing here in front of all these people to take a picture so Hurry UP and take the darn picture!" face

More tiles

Standing underneath the nose of the shuttle. E is passed out

Under the Shuttle nose

Jack really liked watching the shuttle lift off. This is the same shuttle that you see in the pictures. Now we have the NASA YouTube channel as one of our "favorites" and watch videos of the shuttle on the "puter." A burgeoning space nerd?!

The back of the VAB. Huge, I tell you!

So KSC can create and implement astounding technical feats sending man and machine into space to complete beyond imaginable experiments.... and yet, they serve the ABSOLUTE WORST hot dog I've ever eaten IN.MY.LIFE. Not joking. I was very hungry, so I ate it (as did the boys). I immediately regretted that.

This is called the Mobile Launcher and it's for the next breed of space vehicles called the Ares rocket. Check out info here from Wikipedia. Obama called for a cancellation of the Constellation program, but a whole bunch of weird junk is going down in congress....... which pretty much means We Have No Idea. Anyway, this is what Matt works on. For now.

Good thing I was there!

I promised earlier that I would have more pictures and info about the crawler. Here it is! This thing is so cool.

Tank holds 5,000 gallons of gas
Burns 150 mpg. Talk about low gas mileage
Moves at 2 mph unloaded, and a whopping 1 mph when loaded
The crawlerway (road) that the crawler travels along is covered in river rocks from Tennessee and Alabama to decrease friction and the possibility of sparks