Vacation Day 16 & 17 - Port Canaveral

We collected our stuff and were very politely invited to leave the ship at 8am.  We grabbed a cab and headed on down he road to the hotel where we'd left our car.  Although I was never concerned about the car's safety, it was great to come around the corner and see it still there.   

Nasa was our next planned stop.   On Sunday we'd heard that the Nasa Shuttle Launch was rescheuled to Moday night nd we had grand hopes of seeing it.  On the road again .... stops for lunch, books at Barnes & Noble and a so-so dinner at Olive Garden; another night in the favored Comfort Inn.     Oh, we missed the shuttle ... it went off at 4:28 a.m. ... although dark, still a different interpretation of night launch.

We headed into Nasa, Port Canaveral right after opening and paid our $39./ea.  admittance.   

This sweet group of birds met and calmed us after getting through the whole security routine.  NASA is surrounded and part of a wildlife sanctuary and there are birds everywhere.    There's also several sets of nestings eagles.   Our shuttle bus made a stop to show us a 700 pound eage nest . WOW.

 

One of the launch stations

A crawler that moves the shuttles through the facility and to the launch pad.   For some scale, a very tall personwul not even reach 1/3 up on the wheel. 

 

The jets on the bottom of a previous shuttle.   These are HUGE.   For a graphic standpoint, I particularly loved the textural quality. 

An early space capsule

These are hand imprints from the Apollo 11 astronauts.   The display, I'm sure, was to point out how small there hands are, but the visual is a piece of art in itself. 

Contained here at this facility is a marvelous amount of history, displayed wonderfully.   There's alot of interactive qualities and it takes a whole day to experience.   It started raining around 3pm and we moved in from exhibits and watched one of the Imax films.   At 5:30, they called it closing and we had to leave.

I'm not a huge space fan.   I recognize all the ways that it has benefited our current society and all the potentials that further studies and exploration are, but still find the amounts of money being spent in a time when we can't offer all our people health benefits quite upsetting.