11/04/19 - Exploring the Kennedy Space Center with Mom and Aunt Teresa!

What do the thermal folks have to say about those pants?

Oh my.

The CM is being pulled off of the SM!

Just by coincidence, we're visiting KSC in the middle of my coverage of the Challenger accident for The Space Above Us.

The waitress at our hotel had a ton of cool pins! I think she was hoping I'd get her a Restore-L pin

Blue Origin is building something

"Hey Aunt Teresa!"

Aunt Teresa loves VR

Mom with Atlantis!

Mom and Aunt Teresa with Atlantis! They were both suitably impressed

Who loves space shuttles?

Hey old buddy

Atlantis does not like belly rubs.

Aunt Teresa ventured partway into the 3/8 scale ISS

So many tiles!

A deorbit checklist for the shuttle!

Mom's the pilot on this mission

I took this photo about 2 milliseconds before being run over by the shuttle

It's MMU 2! I lost track of which ones actually flew

Aft section of Atlantis

Those big huge flight deck windows

Hubble mockup rocking the NASA worm

Aunt Teresa goes down the reentry slide!

She was really moving. Mom chickened out!

Mom examining artifacts from the Challenger

It's pretty incredible seeing the Challenger debris up close and in person

Closeup of the damage on Challenger

Scars

Some of the white tiles that were common on Columbia and Challenger

Columbia's eyes

Incredible they survived in such good condition

It's a pretty sobering room

SpaceX Heavy!

Lunch has crashed

How will I eat??

Going on the early space tour!

On the bus

Just a couple of Falcon 9 first stages hanging around after returning from space, no big deal.

Falcons!

This is how the Falcons get moved around

The tour guide made fun of SpaceX for putting their logo on everything... something NASA definitely definitely isn't guilty of

Hangar S! Where it all started

The birthplace of the human spaceflight program

These are the range radars that sometimes cause scrubs when they have issues

Secret NRO building!

STINKTOWN: population Bryce

A V2 engine! It's so complicated but at the same time has an elegance to its design

The Navaho.. the most influential program to go nowhere

Listening to the Air Force tour guide

Little weather sensor sent up on sounding rockets to see if it's OK for the big rockets to fly

Check out these stylish control panels

Isogrid skin for a Delta. This is the old style. For Vulcan they switched to rectangular patterns that are even lighter

Look who I found just lying around! It's Gemini 2! One of the first vehicles to fly in space twice

The history of Gemini 2

They actually cut a hole in it and then put the cut out piece back in to see if it would survive reentry

I wonder where that piece is today? Also, I think this hole is bigger than the original piece. I'm guessing they cut out a bigger piece to analyze

Pretty impressive model collection!

X-20! Also known as... Dynasoar!

The commander's seat is full of robot parts

Also the pilot's seat

Closeup on Gemini 2's skin

Early communications satellites are funny. I think they didn't have much emphasis on attitude control

That's a big heavy computer to put in a missile

Mom and Aunt Teresa thought it was pretty interesting

Closeup of the V2 plumbing

Dynasoar and Manned Orbiting Laboratory! Big space programs in an alternate history

Pffft. Dynasaor

Gemini's a neat spacecraft

The tour guide told the story of Gemini 2

Old antennas

Old Delta IV core lying around. The rain stripped away teh insulation

Like a tornado shelter?

SpaceX!

Mom got excited about Jeanie. What's funny is that comic down there makes fun of everyone getting excited about I Dream of Jeanie instead of Mercury!

So many clocks

Original controls from the Mercury days

This computer looks like a fake computer from some 50s movie

Watch your levels!

Look at all these little switches and lights!

Cool big dials

Our tour guide was great

Hello, and welcome to The Space Above Us..

This is a cool window to look through

Unfortunately it's extremely green and misty since it's so thick and old. It's really a whole bunch of windows stuck together

Whoa! An actual teletypewriter! As in TTY! But not the virtual type

DIGITAL, you say

Like core rope memory?

These are the windows Wernher von Braun watched America's first orbital launch from. Standing right where I'm standing

This is how you control it?

Ham's little space pod

Aunt Teresa is taking lots of pictures

Mom's in the Firing Room!

I guess these two Jupiter launches were pretty boring

I didn't realize Enos got his own mission patch!

Also ham!

This is a sample of those green windows. You can see just how thick it is

Firing Room B. Just as it was over 60 years ago

A lot of history happened in here

I guess this is before 911

Mom couldn't resist posing with Jeanie

Details on the blockhouse

This is where it all started! For the US at least

Old train engine used to move the rockets around

An old Hound Dog missile that's broken down a bit

A Titan I, the predecessor to the Titan II!

The engine on the back of the Delta IV core

I believe this is an authentic Redstone missile, erected where Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom launched on their Mercury flights

Thrust deflector

"MR7" is painted on the bottom, just like it was for Alan Shepard

Mom and Aunt Teresa on the pad where Americans first launched into space!

It's a photogenic rocket

Our guide for this was pretty great. He knew everything

Aunt Teresa says "neat"

Everyone gather around the rocket!

Awkward DSLR selfie

Sacred ground

One last look at the Redstone

Beefy looking door

The view launch controllers would have had for Alan Shepard's flight. Pretty close to the launch vehicle!

This is the button that launched it! I definitely didn't reach up around the plastic to touch it when nobody was looking!

Old controls

A photo of the actual launch next to the current Redstone

Quite a view

Old school electronics

It was tough to make the Redstone visible through the thick green windows

Old headset?

Lots of electronics in a rocket like that

Such chunky electronics

Switch to launch!

Yeah, calibrate that computer

The remains of Challenger are somewhere in this area, at the bottom of a missile silo

Blue Origin is building stuff

SpaceX added a second landing zone since the last time I was here!

Looking down towards the landing zones. No rockets there this time.

Right next door is SLC-14

This is where the orbital Mercury flights launched from!

Hey let's accidentally include a nearly identical photo

A monument to the Mercury Seven

Patriotism at the site of the Apollo 1 accident

Abandon in place

Space past and space present

The Apollo 1 launch mount is falling apart

It's a pretty incredible place

It's amazing how these big chunks of concrete can have so much emotional meeting

Hey it's the ocean!

December 6th, 1960? This is before any human launches!

Let's read the kiosk!

Back on the bus

It's the astronauts' beach house!

Launch Complex 39-A looking good. The new black cladding is in place. And look at that crew access arm!

Back at the visitor complex

Hey it's the Orion capsule from EFT-1!

Closeup of the thermal protection tiles on Orion

A little wear on the flag

A wide angle view to see the whole spacecraft

Windows up front

Each tile gets an identification number

Up near the docking port

Hey it's my Dragon! This is the Dragon from COTS-2+!

This RCS quad looks so handmade!

The edge of the heat shield

Funky connectors

I was there when this Dragon launched as the first commercial vehicle to dock to the ISS

It was only SpaceX's 8th launch

Looking inside the Starliner mockup

Lots of seats in there

Whoops

Orion is hard to take pictures of in this dark room

Me with Dragon!

Nice looking isogrid on Starliner (I think)

What the hell is this aspect ratio?? It's looks like a 16:9 image stretched out to 48:9??

The pressure vessel for maybe-Starliner

Bye, Dragon

Mom's got some cool glasses

Peeking inside Wally Schirra's Mercury capsule

The original Project Mercury consoles

The lighting of this shot was impossible! Mom and Aunt Teresa liked it though

Looking at personal artifacts of astronauts

Gordon Cooper used this checklist!

The mission control center was so basic. But they had to start somewhere!

Look at the little CRTs!

Big ol' printer for telemetry

Overview of the Mercury control center

Aunt Teresa snaps more pictures

What's that thermal blanket under the heat shingles?

Gus Grissom's Mercury spacesuit

A legend wore this suit

Detail at the front of the Gemini-IXA spacecraft

The gap left by the parachute switching to horizontal mode

Primitive controls.. but good enough to effect an orbital rendezvous!

Tom Stafford's controls

Lots of switches

Aunt Teresa and Mom with John Young's plaque!

Lots of astronauts in the Astronaut Hall of Fame!

Even a Titan II needs a brushy brushy now and then

Mom's turn to crawl into the Mercury capsule

Mom's ready for space! I guess this makes up for the shuttle slide

How do you get out?

Mom's back from her Mercury trip!

The Atlas is so shiny

Learning about rockets

What happened to the F-1 engine!

Saturn-1B looking good

Gotta love the rocket garden

What's up with this bird?

Mom and Aunt Teresa pose with the SRBs!

I definitely didn't include this almost identical photo by accident

Mom and Aunt Teresa agree that the SRBs are big

I miss the space shuttle

The Columbia crew on the Space Mirror

A visit to the Space Mirror is always sobering, but I make sure to go every time I'm at KSC

Flowers for Ted

The Challenger crew

The conquest of space is worth the risk of life

Bob Crippen's flight suit!

Wow, this model actually has the updated field joint! You can see the third o-ring and the capture feature

The original astrovan

Max Faget's shuttle model

Atlantis!

Big doors for the landing gear

The actual gaseous oxygen vent arm and hood, aka The Beanie

Looking up at Atlantis' body flap

The wide angle cell phone view captures the whole thing

There's that little thermal tile around the water dump valves! After Discovery had icicles building up on the side they replaced the thermal blanket with tiles

No birds allowed on Mars!

Astronaut Dan Tani! He was a really cool guy and now he actually listens to my podcast!

Tani telling great stories about being in space

Watch out, the ISS is right behind you!

Aunt Teresa, Mom, and me with astronaut Dan Tani!

NASA ambulance!

I was right next to these bleachers when I watched the Falcon Heavy launch

Gruber Ditch?

SLC-41, with the Boeing crew access arm

LC-39A!

The support structure for SLS is on the pad over at LC-39B

Looking back at the VAB. Who left the windows open?

Panorama from the observation gantry

Mom and Aunt Teresa with LC-39A!

Group photo!

Not quite yet though

Looking up the ramp to LC-39A

What is SpaceX up to?

Peeking from behind the launch complex

I love that crew access arm

LC-39B

Recreating a photo from 2004!

It's a good looking launchpad

Milling about the camera station

That's a big camera

SLS support structure

Building a tank? You can do that?

Is that access arm supposed to be so... bending down?

Our tour guide was awesome

This pre-Saturn V show is just as hokey as I remembered

Nice looking consoles though

Mom seeing the Saturn V for the first time

I couldn't catch this guy's name! But the red nametag means he's a marine so that certainly narrows the list

Mom with the Saturn V!

Mom and Aunt Teresa with the Saturn V!

LM-9! This almost flew on Apollo 15

The ladder is so high

Looking up into the commander's window

Aunt Teresa dutifully explores the interactive educational thing

Aunt Teresa and Mom examining the Apollo 1 hatch

Scorch marks on the Apollo 1 hatch

It was too complicated to unlatch

KSC has the most irritating setup for the Apollo 1 display. Most of the time the artifacts are obscured by useless videos

Take good samples!

The top of the S-II stage

Apollo 14 CM Kitty Hawk's door

Thrusters for use during entry

It's a good looking spacecraft

"Landing in Apollo is a crash!"

I love the handwritten additions

Alan Shepard's suit

A spaceflight legend

Mom and Aunt Teresa had to pose with the meatball

Aunt Teresa loves the space shuttle

And then we played Head's Up!