We had ended a beautiful cruise in the Caribbean and our cruise line offered a tour to visit NASA on the way to Orlando Airport. We were delighted. We have been fortunate enough to visit NASA back in 2020 and loved every minute of it so were keen to take up the opportunity again.
I was amazed to see the difference in visiting numbers since our last visit to NASA just before COVID and this time we felt like we had the entire Kennedy Space Centre to ourselves, admittedly Hurricane Ian was a large and destructive Category 4 Atlantic hurricane, that was the deadliest hurricane to strike the state of Florida since the 1935 Labor Day hurricane. The outskirt of NASA is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean and the Banana River. Hence there were several surrounding areas of the centre flooded with water due to the Hurricane and our Kidsetter spotted an alligator roaming the grounds.
Our timing was impeccable as we managed to have our photos taken with an astronaut whom was no longer available after our photos.
We entered the Kennedy Space Centre and wandered through the Rocket Garden in pure amazement of these phenomenal spacecrafts. We felt so small in comparison. Our Kidsetter enjoyed pretending he was an astronaut hopping into space shuttle cockpits. Inspiring music played as we leisurely absorbed the atmosphere.
We visited the Space Shuttle Atlantis. This is the real Atlantis orbiter that flew to space 33 times and travelled 126 million miles.
Our Kidsetter was keen to go down the large slide that’s on offer in this area. He slid down at least 30 times! He then explored an interactive simulator’s attempting to land a space shuttle. It was harder than it looks even on a simulator.
Next, we headed to the Universe Theatre to listen to Anna Lee Fisher speak about life as an astronaut. In 1984 she became the first mother in space when her daughter was just 6 weeks old. During her career at NASA, she was involved with three major programs: the Space Shuttle, the Internation Space Station and the Orion spacecraft. Such an impressive person and so humble. After her speech the audience had the opportunity to ask her questions. Our Kidsetter promptly asked her “What does G Force feel like?”
We had time to squeeze one last section in and we were interested in exploring the new Gateway which is the deep space launch complex.
We viewed visionary designs that are paving the way of human deep space travel while discovering the current cutting-edge innovations of space exploration from NASA and commercial partners such as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.
NASA remains to be an awe-inspiring centre of what humankind has the potential to create. We left feeling like nothing is impossible to achieve.
