Space Exploration

This week has gone really quickly but I'm not sure how, we've not actually done that much really. Well, we've done a fair amount but only bits and pieces, not many whole day activities. We have played golf at the driving range, gone to the mall, played baseball in the practice batting cages, gone to downtown West Palm Beach, been on Safari, been to Kennedy Space Center and filled the gaps watching Wimbledon and Euro 2008!

The baseball was pretty fun, hard at first to get used to but eventually we moved up from slow speed softballs (which, by the way, are in no way soft!) to medium speed baseballs. We were pretty happy with ourselves as we both managed to hit quite a few of them. It was definitely worth trying out one of America's favourite sports, if only to find out it's harder than it looks, giving us a new found respect for baseball players!!
On Wednesday we finally went to 'Lion Country Safari', the worlds first purpose built drive through safari park. It was a nice day (not raining for once) so the animals were all out in force. We got to see many animals up close including Emus, Zebras, Giraffes, Rhinos, lots of different deer, Lions (all sleeping!), Elephants, Chimps and a cool White-Handed Gibbon who was showing off on the monkey bars!
On Thursday we went to check out downtown West Palm Beach and visited the area called City Place. It was really nice with lots of shops, restaurants and cafés in a very nice setting. It really reminded me of Dubai as it was just off a big motorway, it was all very new and very clean and looked slightly out of place. Nothing wrong with it though as overall it was a really nice area to spend the afternoon. We also checked out West Palm Beach itself and it seemed really nice, we'll probably head down there today if the weather holds up.

The main attraction this week, however, was our visit to the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. This is only about 40 miles east of Orlando so we knew we were in for another long drive, luckily it was definitely worth the trip. The main part of our visit there was taken up by the bus tour. This has 3 stops around the huge site where you are dropped off to have a look around. Cape Canaveral itself is and island 8 times the size on Manhattan Island and it is also a wildlife reserve so it's pretty nice to drive around. We saw a few Alligators and even a Manatee whilst going between points of interest.
The first stop was at the Launch Pad Observation Gantry from where you can see Launch Pads 39A and 39B. It was pad 39A that every single Apollo mission was launched from along with most of the recent shuttle launches. The observation deck was about a mile away from the launch pad. The reason for this is safety, within 400 yards of liftoff you would be killed by the heat, within 800 yards you would still be killed . . . . by the sound! A mile is really the closest they can guarantee safety although all the family, press and V.I.P's watch from over 3 miles back.
The next stop was at the Apollo/Saturn V center where we saw some information about the original 'Space Race'. the failed attempts and how the Americans changed their mission to actually getting on the moon. Here we also saw the actual launch control room used in the Apollo missions. It wasn't even a mock up, they've actually left the original there! After watching a 'liftoff' from launch control we left and went into a big hangar containing the Saturn V rocket. It is HUUUUUUGGGGGGE, and even that is an understatement! In this room was the entire rocket, a lunar rover that they trained with and a lunar lander for moon landings. They also had information about every Apollo mission with a quote from each one including Apollo 11 - "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" and Apollo 13 - "Houston . . . . . . . We have a problem". But my favourite was from Apollo 17 as the astronaut stepped onto the moon - "Yippee, this is fun!!".
The last stop was at the International Space Station Center where anything and everything going up to the ISS is processed, sterilised and readied for its trip into space. We also got to walk through the habitation module and a laboratory that are exact replicas of what is in space right now.

Back at the visitors centre after a 4 and a bit hour tour we went on the 'Shuttle Launch Experience' which is apparently one of the most realistic simulators of a launch that you can go on without leaving the ground, pretty cool! We finished our trip off by going to the 3D IMAX and watching a film about going to and walking on the moon. This was really interesting and amazing to know that only 12 men have ever stepped foot on the moon and the most recent of these was over 30 years ago. NASA are planning to go back to the moon though in 2020 as part of their new program, the constellation program which will also involve trying to put man on Mars!