Here are more photos from my visit to the Kennedy Space Center. This visit coincided with my completion of Apollo, so my whole brain was prepped for the experience.

Here's a peek at the Rocket Garden as you approach the Visitor Center:



If you want to take one of the special tours (NASA Up-Close and Cape Canaveral: Then & Now), you're strongly encouraged to make reservations in advance. I made a reservation for NASA Up Close; and thanks to some navigation difficulties (I programmed my Hertz Never-Lost for the KSC Federal Credit Union, not KSC itself), I arrived just in time to start the tour. Our guide for the day was Don Garretson:



Don started his career in the oil business, specializing in fluid flows, gas detection, and related instrumentation. That led him to a job with the KSC engineering staff working on gas detection, containment, and transfer during construction of various facilities such as the ISS preparation buildings. Once those facilities were complete, NASA cut back on contract engineers in those areas. So Don found a job as a KSC tour guide. He's very knowledgeable and personable, and provides a great tour.

There was one down side to the tour:



I have mentioned on other occasions how much I loathe buses. Well, for this tour, I just had to put up with the bus.

For reference on the tour, here's a map of KSC (from this site):



As we pulled out of the Visitor Center, Don pointed out this:



That building you see there is the Vehicle Assembly Building, or more commonly known as just the VAB. As Don pointed out, it only looks small in this picture because of how far away it is: 5 miles. It's actually the third-largest building in the USA by volume, and has the tallest single storey anywhere. We'll see a lot more of the VAB in later photos.

Don also pointed out some other buildings. Here's the KSC Headquarters:



And here are some shots of the Operations and Checkout building (O&C), where spacrecraft modules are checked out before assembly, and where astronauts stay immediately before and after a flight:







If you look closely at the second storey of that last shot, you'll see the Door to Nowhere: a door with no stairs leading up to it. Beyond that door is the O&C clinic. After a lengthy Shuttle mission or especially an ISS mission, astronauts sometimes are in no shape to walk. They may have trouble with balance, or they may have weakened muscles and bones. The carrier that takes them from the Shuttle landing strip to the O&C is designed to lift stretchers straight up to the Door to Nowhere and into the clinic without the astronauts ever having to get up.

Our first stop on the tour was a viewing stand where visitors can sit on bleachers and look across the water to various prep launch facilities:



The left-most building is devoted to a new approach. In the traditional prep-and-launch, the rocket and its payload (collectively known as "the stack" are assembled in a building and the slowly, carefully hauled out to a launch platform. In this new facility, the stack is assembled, and then the building is moved away. The stack remains motionless, so there's no chance of anything being dislodged in transit. As Don explained it, this can reduce prep time from months to hours.

Here's a shot of the VAB from the same bleachers:



Our next stop was a preparation center for elements of the International Space Station (ISS). We couldn't photograph the modules themselves, not for security reasons, but rather to avoid a hazard: the fire suppression systems in the prep rooms might interpret camera flashes as a fire, and then drench and ruin a lot of very expensive equipment. While we were there, they were preparing the three cargo modules used to haul supplies to the ISS and haul garbage back. These are named Leonardo, Raphael, and Donatello — no, not for the Ninja Turtels, for the Italian painters. The cargo modules are made by Italy as part of their contribution to the ISS. Don told the story of how, when Raphael first came down with a load of garbage, the stench was so bad that the workers refused to go in. After sealing it up with charcoal pellets for a week, it was finally tolerable, and they could finish the clean-up.

While the ISS components could not be photographed, the ISS center included a visitor center with models and mock-ups. Here's an ISS spacesuit:



Here's a model of Skylab, the first space station:



And here's a model of Mir, the second space station.



And finally, here's a model of the ISS itself:



Here's a model of Canada's contribution: a robotic arm used for moving modules and cargo containers. I'm not sure this name is official, but I've heard it called the Canadarm:



Here's a mock-up of one of the Habitat modules:



Inside the Habitat module, here are a restroom, a shower, and a sleeping chamber:







I never figured out what the NOD module was, but here it is:



And inside, you can see that the ISS is a luxury condo as spacecraft go:



(If you don't believe me, jump ahead to the photos of the interiors of the Mercury and Apollo capsules.)

I didn't get an exterior shot of the Lab module (and frankly, they all look kinda the same from outside); but here's the gasmap, one of the experiments in the Lab:



Next, the bus took us on a drive around the VAB:



Now the word for the VAB is big; but no picture can possibly convey just how big it is. To try to give you some hint of the size: each stripe in that flag on the side is wider than the bus we were riding.

Here are the big doors used for taking spacecraft out for launch:



Again, the word is big. The Statue of Liberty could fit comfortably through those doors. A fully ready Saturn V stack with an Apollo CSM and an escape tower, though, came within 5 feet of the top of the doors.

So how would you move that massive Saturn V stack to the launch pad? That's where the crawler carrier comes in:



The crawler carrier is a massive tracked vehicle with the surface area of a baseball diamond. Moving at a top speed that's about as fast as a leisurely walk, it would haul the Saturn V out, slowly but surely, to the Pad 39 complex. (More on that below.) Today, it serves the same purpose for Space Shuttles, hauling each one out atop the Shuttle launch platform:



This is much more than a platform: it's really a small building, complete with offices and machine shops. The crawler carrier slides under it, lifts it up, and carries it into the VAB. There a crane lifts the orbiter and the external tank and the booster engines into place, so that workers can attach them. The two pylon-like buildings on top of the platform help stabilize the orbiter's tail.

But before the orbiter can be placed on the launch platform, it has to be prepped in one of the three Shuttle "garages". Here's the door into one:



Notice the door has a notch in the top to allow for the orbiter's tail fin.

Once the orbiter and the tank and the boosters are assembled, the crawler carrier pulls them out along this path:



The two lanes allow for the two sets of treads. The lanes are not gravel, but rather Tennessee River Rock from Alabama. (Hey, it was funny when Don said it!) This rock is chosen because of its small round size and hardness, but especially because it is pretty much immune to sparking under compression. In the Apollo days, sparks might be a problem, but not too big of a problem: the Saturn V engines used liquid fuel (kerosene and liquid oxygen), and were fueled up while on the launch pad. The Shuttle orbiter also uses liquid fuel; but the external boosters are solid fuel rockets. That means that they're fully fueled and ready to ignite as the Shuttle goes down the path. A stray spark at the wrong moment could lead to a fire; and that could lead to a real disaster.

After the VAB, the bus took us out to a photo stand on the Pad 39 complex. There we could see the two launch pads used for the Apollo launches as well as almost every manned NASA launch. (Unmanned rockets usually launch from the Air Force's facilities at Cape Canaveral.) Here's Pad 39A, from which Columbia launched on both her first and last flights:



And here's Pad 39B, from which Challenger launched on her last flight:



That shot of Pad 39B was a close-up as we drove past to our next stop, the Space Shuttle landing strip. Further along, we passed the Media Center where reporters and camera crews set up to cover missions:



And then we arrived at the Space Shuttle landing strip:



This is another place where a picture just can't capture the immensity. That landing strip is 15,000 feet long, making it one of the largest in the world.

Here's the traffic control tower for the landing strip:



Along the way to our last stop, we passed what looked like a futuristic junk yard:



What it actually is is what my buddy Tom Lavey would call a bunch of giant test shims. These pieces of "junk" are actually mock-ups of various fittings and assemblies from the launch pads and elsewhere. When engineers are working on new systems that have to integrate with these fittings and assemblies, they can bring their equipment here and test it on the test fittings first, rather than waiting for time on the actual launch pad and possibly wasting a lot of time. While it may sound funny to think about having the wrong sized parts at launch day, NASA knows it's not funny at all. As Murray and Cox explain in Apollo, the heat shield on the very first Mecury test capsule turned out to be larger than the missile, and had to be carved down to fit, right on the launch pad. It's better to learn that sort of thing before launch day.

Our last stop on the tour was the Saturn V Center. The Saturn V at KSC used to be outside; but when weather began to take its toll, NASA built a special exhibit center and then moved the rocket inside and refurbished it. You enter the Saturn V Center through a small stand-up movie theater which introduces you to the Apollo program. Then from there, you move into the actual Apollo Launch Control room:



There they present a complex multimedia presentation of the last three minutes of an Apollo launch. As recorded voices from the various comm loops play over the speakers, each console is spotlighted when the corresponding voice is on the loops. Meanwhile, screens overhead show video from the various cameras: Launch Control, the launch pad, and elsewhere. The presentation ends with the building-shaking sound of the Saturn V launch. And then the doors open, and they let you in to see the Saturn V itself. We'll start with my traditional rocket butt shot:



Those five F-1 engines combined to produce 7.5 million pounds of thrust; and yet as powerful as they were, they were also delicately gimballed, so that they could pivot in different directions to control the angle of thrust. Growing up, I would see film of the engines, and I always thought I was only imagining that things that big and powerful were moving; but it was no illusion.

Here's a close-up of the plumbing for one F-1 engine:



Here's a length-wise view from Stage II forward:



And here are the five J-2 engines of Stage II, as well as Stage II itself:





Here's a length-wise view from Stage III forward:



And here's the single J-2 engine of Stage III, as well as Stage III itself:





Here's an Instrumentation Unit that sat between two stages and provided cameras and other sensors:



Here's the Service Module:



Note the spherical tanks, which I believe contained H2, O2, and water.

Here's the Command Module and the escape tower (the rocket and tower which would fling the Command Module to safety in the case of an emergency before launch or early in the launch):



And here's a length-wise shot from the nose backward:



They have a second Command Module and Service Module (collectively, Command and Service Module, or CSM) on the ground beneath the nose of the Saturn V:



I think that the Command Module here is the actual CM from the Apollo-Soyuz mission:



It's supposed to be at the Saturn V Center, and I didn't see it anywhere else. Also, this CM was sealed in plexiglass, something they usually reserve for actual flight articles:



But I didn't see every sign, and I never saw a sign that identified this Command Module, so I can't be certain. (I'll verify this on my next trip.)

Here's another angle on this Command Module:



And here's a rare opportunity, a butt shot of the Service Propulsion System or SPS, the main engine of the CSM:



And here's an even more rare butt shot:



That's the Descent Engine of an actual Lunar Module (or LM, pronounced "LEM"). Not a mock-up or a tester, but a real LM. Most of the real LMs went on missions, and were left in space. Those that went to the Moon left their Descent Stages there, while their Ascent Stages usually were crashed into the Moon to gather seismic data. Other Ascent Stages burned up in the atmosphere. One went into a solar orbit.

But this LM never flew. It was commissioned and built for the Apollo 15 mission; but then they redesigned the LM to carry the Lunar Rover, and this LM no longer fit the spec. And so now it hangs from the ceiling in the Saturn V Center:



Here's a model of a LM in the adapter stage of a Saturn V:



And speaking of the Lunar Rover, there was one parked near the Saturn V:





And nearby is a replica of an Apollo spacesuit:



And near the nose of the Saturn V was the Moon rock I showed in my previous post:



Here's a description of the Moon rock:



Also near the nose was this van used to carry the astronauts out to the launch pad:



And there was also another multimedia theater which showed movies of the actual landing footage from Apollo 11. And then, at just the right moment, they switched from movies to stage performance, dropping a replica LM down to a simulated Moonscape. It came out of nowhere and was a very effective special effect. Then they showed movies of Armstrong and Aldrin exploring the Moon; and at just the right moment, the replica Ascent Stage took off back into the sky. It was awesome (but not quite authentic: during the actual Apollo 11 ascent, the exhaust from the Ascent Engine actually knocked over the American flag that Armstrong and Aldrin had planted; but it stayed standing in this presentation).

A different bus took us back to the Visitor Center; but before I discuss that, there are a couple of miscellaneous shots from the tour. Don was sure to point out several times that most of KSC (130,000 acres out of 140,000) is a wildlife refuge. In particular, he liked to point out the alligators, from the safety of a moving bus. I wasn't fast enough to get many alligator shots, but this was the best one:



And here were some birds:



Because the waters around KSC are home to manatees, outboard motors are severely restricted; but air boats are common:



Back at the Visitor Center, the first place I went was the Rocket Garden. Here's a Redstone:



Here's an Atlas:



And here's an Atlas with an Agena rocket attached:



Here's a Titan:



Here's a J-2 engine:



And here's an F-1 engine:



Here's an actual Saturn V gantry, which took the astronauts from the launch tower to the White Room and then into the Command Module:



You could walk this (safely on the ground) into the White Room and then look inside a Command Module mock-up:



And here's a Saturn I:



It was held in reserve as a possible lifeboat for Skylab, but was never needed.

After the Rocket Garden, I went to the Exploration in the New Millenium pavillion, where they have exhibits on past, present, and future missions beyond the Moon. Here's a mock-up of the Viking probe on Mars:



And here's a mock-up of the Cassini-Huygens probe that explored Saturn:



After that, I waited for the last Astronaut Encounter of the day. This guy didn't seem too impressed:



"He flew. Big deal. I've been doing that since I left the nest!"

Finally, astronaut John Fabian appeared and spoke to the audience:



Colonel Fabian was in Air Force ROTC at Washington State University, and then served as a combat pilot, with 96 missions to his credit. He was a Mission Specialist on STS 7 (Sally Ride's first mission) and STS 51G (where he served alongside Sultan Salman Abdulaziz Al-Saud). After his talk, he posed for photos:



By that point, it was almost closing time, so I missed out on this:



That's a full-sized Shuttle mock-up, in an area of the Visitor Center that I never got to. But fear not, Shuttle fans! I'll have more photos. I'll be back Saturday, including a reservation for the Cape Canaveral: Then & Now tour. (And if I still haven't got all the photos and info I need, I can spare almost half a day there Sunday.)

But just because KSC was closing didn't mean my day was done. The Astronaut Hall of Fame (just across the bridge to the mainland) stays open 90 minutes later. 90 minutes isn't really enough there, but it's a start. Here's the entrance:



And here's the dedication:



And when you walk in the door, the first thing you see is Alan Shepard, first American in space, cast in bronze:



And behind that is a tremendously large mural of an astronaut reaching for the stars:



But that's not just a mural. The signature at the bottom reads Alan Bean, the fourth man to walk on the Moon. Since his retirement in 1981, Captain Bean has made his career as one of the preeminent space artists in the world.

Beyond the turnstyle, you'll find actual Mission Control consoles from Project Mercury:



As well as an actual Project Mercury spacesuit:



But those are just lead-ups to this:



That's the Sigma-7, the Mercury capsule flown by Wally Schirra. Here's an interior shot:



But that's not the only hardware to be found at the Hall of Fame. Here's my main goal for this visit:



That's the Apollo 14 Command Module, flown by Alan Shepard, Stu Roosa, and Ed Mitchell, completing the mission to the Fra Mauro highlands that was interrupted by the Apollo 13 disaster. Here's an interior shot:



And here's a shot of the hatch:



Spacesuits evolved from the Mercury era. This intermediate stage was nicknamed the Grasshopper:



By contrast, this is an exhibit of flight helmets worn by aviators who went on to be Hall of Fame astronauts:



Well, that's a start. Look for more photos after my return visit Saturday.

...Kennedy Space Center. Because I can (T-Mobile willing).

Here's just a quick photo:



The hand in the photo is mine (identifiable by my wedding ring). And the black wedge shape I'm touching? That's a Moon rock.

Yes, I touched the Moon today.

(Well, actually, the rock is under a very thin layer of plastic; but that's still close enough for me.) Update: Further research, while not conclusive, indicates that you get to touch the actual rock. It just happens to have a rather smooth surface.

More later.

So quite by accident, I ended up visiting the Apollo 13 and Apollo 16 Command Modules. And next week, thanks to an unexpected .NET BootCamp gig in Orlando, I'll get a chance to visit the Kennedy Space Center (where the Apollo-Soyuz Command Module is located) and the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame (where Apollo 14 is located).

And that led me to wonder where the various Command Modules are today; and that led me to this site, which tells where to find all sorts of American spacecraft. And that plus Microsoft MapPoint led me to produce this map (warning: large download):



The dark blue triangles represent Apollo Command Modules. (Not shown: Apollo 10, found at the Science Museum in London, England.) The light blue triangles represent Apollo Command Modules that I have visited:

• Apollo 8, at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. I haven't been there in two decades, so I don't have any digital photos to post. But I've seen it.


• Apollo 9, now at the San Diego Aerospace Museum, but formerly at the now-defunct Michigan Space and Science Center. I used to make side trips there whenever my travels across the state allowed, so that I could gaze on Apollo 9 and remind myself that my job's not rocket science. But again, that was before I had digital photo capability.


• Apollo 13, at the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson.


• Apollo 16, at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville.


• Apollo-Soyuz, at the Kennedy Space Center. Sandy and I went there during one day of our honeymoon. Again, that was long before digital photos. But we were there!

And then I realized: I have visited five out of fifteen Command Modules (sixteen, if you count the test module in Seattle, listed here). And that began to sound suspiciously like a quest: to visit or revisit them all, and get a complete set of photos posted here on my blog.

So imagine my delight when I realized that I was speaking in Dallas this week, and that the Apollo 7 Command Module is located at the Frontiers of Flight Museum at Love Field, a museum dedicated specifically to ground-breaking aircraft that set the course for aircraft to follow. I made sure to squeeze time into my schedule for a visit, so that I could convert one of those triangles from dark blue to light blue. The photos that follow are the results.

Let's start with the star of the show. As you enter, you see Apollo 7 from the rear:



Then you come around the side, and see the open hatch:



And then you climb steps for the front view:



The Apollo 7 Command Module fits the mission of the museum well, since it was the first manned launch of a Command Module. This is also the first Command Module I've seen where it was easy to see the hatch interior:



And of course, there's the obligatory interior shot (behind plexiglass, as always):



Apollo 7 was not the only Apollo-era memorabilia at the museum. Here's Don Eisele's spacesuit:



Here are Charlie Duke's gloves:



In the background, you can also see one of the dread urine collector packs. Here are some other pieces of Apollo gear:



Here's a pressure chamber used in Skylab to test how astronauts' lower extremities behaved in various pressures and zero gravity:



Here's a Skylab exercise bike, used to test how astronauts systems behaved under exertion in space:



And here's a Skylab Experiment Support cabinet:



From what I could tell, the top part of the cabinet contained slots into which various powered modules could be plugged for various experiments. The bottom part looked like it contained drawers for supplies for the experiments.

Near Apollo 7, they had a very small movie theater showing Apollo footage. That also held a tiny chunk of Moon rock:



And they had a roughly three-foot model of a LM:



I'm so jealous!

Near the theater, they had exhibits from Beal Aerospace's new developments in lifting vehicles and engines, many of which are being manufactured or tested in the area. Here'a a scale model of the BA-2 launch vehicle:



And here's a (large) description:



Here's a combustion chamber and nozzle from one of their BA-810 engines:



And here's a (large) description of the engine:



And here's part of their PR material (again, large):



Near the Beal display is a Regulus II cruise missile:



I don't think I ever realized how large a cruise missile is, nor how much like an airplane it is. I guess that's the point: rather than following a ballistic arc, it cruises to the target like a plane.

And in keeping with my tradition ("Always include a butt shot of the rocket"), here's a butt shot of the Regulus II:



Here's a Huey helicopter:



And here's an F-16 fighter, famed for still today beating aircraft that are 30 years newer:



An Airman I know works on the explosive ejection seat mechanisms for fighters. He should appreciate this history of ejection seats:











Here's an A-7 Corsair II:



Here's a Crusader RF-G:



And here's some plane:



And here's some other plane (I think it might've been the "Sopwith Pup"):



There were more details about those last two planes, and a lot of other exhibits as well; but my camera batteries were failing. And besides, I wanted to get back to my hotel and off the roads. Dallas was starting to do this:



Man, a little glare ice all over the place, and these Texans just forget how to drive...

Update: I'm a little disappointed. I've visited Atlanta, Cleveland, Dayton, Seattle, and the Pensacola region, and I never realized there were command modules nearby. Those could have put me up to eleven, twelve after next week. I'll have to try to correct those mistakes.

And I have no idea how I'll find an excuse to get to London...

Of course, the down side to the travel arrangements that Justin made for me was that I was traveling:

1. One way.


2. On extremely short notice.


3. With no checked luggage.


4. On a ticket paid for with somebody else's credit card.

And naturally, somewhere in there I won the TSA lottery: my boarding pass was marked with the magic symbols that mean "Give this guy a full screen."

Now as I wrote before, I take airport security seriously. I know it's common for people to grumble about TSA's screening, especially the random screenings. But I support the screening process, including the random screenings: if you only screen according to a set of rules, that creates a pattern that terrorists can discover and exploit. Random screenings mean that any attempt at discovering such a pattern can be discovered. Plus I put myself through college working as a security guard, and I know how hard that job can be for those who are conscientious about their work. So I'm not going to complain about being selected for screening, especially when my travel circumstances probably did fit a risk profile.

But still, there's not complaining; and then there's being impressed by how professional the screeners are. Back in the 2002-2003 time frame, screening was much more frequent, and I could expect extra screening almost one trip out of five. Then the screening rate dropped. This was probably the first time I've been the subject of extra screening since 2003.

And the process has changed. As I said, it's professional. No, I think an even better word might be polished. The TSA screeners at SEA-TAC were polite, efficient, patient, professional, and polished. They explained what was happening, and they explained the process in full before they proceeded. They let me choose how much privacy I wanted. They were careful with all of my belongings. They were as unintrusive as they could be while still doing a thorough screening job. And with me on a relatively short schedule, they held me up for only as long as it took to clear my stuff and my person. As a former security guard, I was very impressed with how these folks did their job effectively and still managed to be considerate toward the public.

Because of my tight schedule, I didn't get their names or badge numbers. I regret that, because I would like to commend them by name to their supervisors. There's another lesson from my days as a guard: everyone complains if you slip up, but no one seems to notice if you do your job well. Well, this passenger noticed; and I thank those TSA screeners for making travel safer and still making it as pleasant as possible.

I wake up. Check the clock. 6:10 a.m. OK, I'm in Seattle. That means it's really 3:10 a.m., since I never change the time zone on my computer. My flight is set for 6:00 a.m., and I requested a 3:30 a.m. wake-up call from the hotel. I guess I might as well get up now, since I have to get ready to leave.

Wait a minute. I didn't get the time from my computer. I got it from the TV. Which is on Pacific time. Just like my flight.

Which left Seattle ten minutes ago.

Oh, crap. I call the front desk. They have no record of my wake-up call being requested.

Yes, I was angry. I'm human, after all. I had to get home for a my nephew's Eagle Scout award and for a family funeral. This was not helping.

But then I remembered: the hotel staff are human, too. And getting mad won't do anything to make it better.

Here's my message to companies that want my business: I don't expect you to be any more perfect than me (which isn't a very high bar); but when you make a mistake, I expect you to make it right, just as I would hope that I would do in your shoes.

And that's just exactly what Justin Gaston, Operations Manager for the Bellevue Redmond Courtyard, did. His staff immediately offered me a free breakfast (for which I had no time, but the offer still was nice); and Justin personally got on the phone, called the airline, and arranged a new flight home for me, all at no charge to me. Justin was polite, helpful, apologetic, and sympathetic; and he absolutely did right by me.

Yes, I got to DTW eleven hours later than scheduled. Yes, the hour was then so late and the weather so bad that I had to spend the night in a hotel near DTW. Yes, I got home over a day late, by the time all was said and done. Yes, the world's an imperfect place. Nothing's perfect.

But the service that Justin and his staff provided and the efforts they did to correct their mistake came pretty darn close to perfect.

If you'll be in the Redmond area, I strongly encourage you to patronize the Bellevue Redmond Courtyard, 14615 NE 29th Place, Bellevue, WA 98007 (Ph: 425-869-5300). They have reasonable rates and fine rooms, with free high speed Internet access. They're conveniently right across the highway from Microsoft's main campus if you have business there. And they have a staff that should make the Marriott chain proud.

UPDATE: To make it easier to find this entry, I've added a link to it in the right sidebar, right under the links for my books and my classes.

Presentation to the North Dallas .NET Users Group. Topic: Applying Architecture and Design Patterns in .NET. December 7. Postponed due to inclement weather. (Texans think ice belongs in drinks, not on roads.)

Presentation to the Little Rock .Net Users Group. Topic: Aesop's Fables of Software Development. December 8.

.NET 1.0 BootCamp, Orlando, FL. Class runs December 13-16; but travel plans just happened to work out that I'm traveling on the 11th and returning on the 18th. I can't imagine what I'll find to do with the spare time...

Presentation to the Montreal Microsoft .NET Architecture User Group. Topic: Tablet PC Development. March 14.