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Sunday, March 27, 2016

Going To The Kennedy Space Center!

Lon joined the Young Astronaut Half Day Club at his school.  They had several to chose from, Art, Spanish, etc.  What they did not say at the start was there was a possibility that they would be going to the Kennedy Space Center.  That possibility turned into a reality!  Two days before Spring Break started for the rest of his school, we were boarding a bus to central Florida!


Our bus, and driver, Captain Ross. He was a very fun driver.  He was the driver there and back!

He is so excited!

Buddies ready for the adventure, and a Seven and a half hour bus ride

The Welcome to Florida Center.

Yes, they still give out free paper cups of orange juice and grapefruit juice!

He really is happy

Face in the hole

The ice cream machine is still one of the coolest things at a rest stop!

There it is! This has to be part of the Kennedy Space Center!

A fuzzy picture from the bus window but we have arrived. The kids are bouncing up and down!

How cool is that?

The fountain would launch every 5 minutes or so, it was pretty cool to watch
The Rocket Garden

YAY! At our orientation

We had a lecture from an astronaut! Mr. Thomas was very entertaining. He had a question and answer session too. The kids asked some great questions. I loved that they asked about what they really wanted to know.   One child asked how you used the bathroom in space.  I would have never asked that question, but I did want to know.   It seems there are a series of fans that create a downdraft to remove the waste to a holding tank.  There is a lot of engineering that went into making that work.

The dinner menu.  It was not a bad dinner. Everything was fresh and tasty.

After dinner we had a 3-D IMAX movie.   We learned about Orion and the mission to Mars.

The night time sign
Going to the buses to take us to the Saturn V Rocket Building. Where we are going to spend the night!

The Atlantis Building. These are full size replicas of the booster rockets and fuel tanks that took Atlantis into space.  The Space Shuttle Atlantis is inside that building!



Our night time bus tour.

He is so happy and excited!!

Learning about the moon landing and  what it took to get there. The computing power they used was significantly less than what we have in a basic smart phone today.  The courage these people had is staggering

The control console

The engines on the Saturn V  rocket.   They are HUGE! Really really huge

 maybe you can tell how big  it is from this angle

They are in awe

we all were

The evening activity was to build a paper rocket.  It is a piece of paper wrapped around a tube, so the paper rocket it a hollow tube when it is finished

a little exploring.

We love Snoopy!

Finally it was Spann's  turn to shoot their paper rockets!

  Lon's rocket went almost to the next kiosk!  It was the farthest of any of the kids! He did great!

it was 11pm and time for lights out. Lon did not last very long after lights out.  A very busy day. we learned so much .

tomorrow is MORE fun at the Kennedy Space Center!


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