Happy Turkey Day family!!
Well it is a bit late, but in my defense, I was required to work on Black Friday and beyond, so this is the first chance I have gotten to post stories. I was planning on writing to Grandma on Thanksgiving and have my mother add a bit, but never got to it. SO. I shall do that in the near future.
Anyway I guess I should explain that my mother and father decided to visit me for Thanksgiving. They flew in on Tuesday and we hung out. Wednesday we went to the Kennedy Space Center. Mainly because I have never been, my father hasn't been there in a long long time, and I don't know about my mother. I meant to take my camera, but forgot, so you get pictures from my phone.
This is the Crawler outside of the assembly building. This is the thing that picks up the launch pad and carries it to the launch pad. We were not able to see the launch pad because there is a launch in a few days and they were prepping for it.
This is the Assembly Building. If you look really closely there is a pickup truck next to the open door. Just to give you scale. Even from the bus it is a very impressive building.
Here is the business end of a Saturn V rocket. This is one of the ones that took us to the moon. I never realized how absolutely enormous this this is. The support cradle that hold it is made out of about 2 inch thick steel plates. Being the way I am, that impressed me. The scale isn't quite as clear as standing under it and being shocked, but from what I can figure, each of those engines are about as wide and your average car is long.
This is the important end. Where the three dude chill out until they arrive at the moon. As you can see, it is hard to see the other end because it is so long.
One cool thing we learned was that long thin thing off of the top is an emergency escape rocket. In case of an emergency they could fire it and it would pull the command capsule off of the rocket and save the astronauts lives.
Outside there in the Rocket Garden they had a number of rockets just hanging out. The biggest was the Saturn I rocket they had laying down. It is impressively big as well, but not as much as the Saturn V.
And here is the business end of this one. These engines are not as big as the F-1 engines on the Saturn V. But they are still rather large.
Instead of taking a good picture of the family, I took one with the windows at the back. But you get the idea. Food, talking, and usual stuff.
And just because I like things like this, here is a hot rod. Every year on Thanksgiving, at the Daytona International Speedway they have the Turkey Rod Run. Basically its a classic car show and swap meet. This guy who met up with an ex employee of Sears came over to let a potential buyer take a look at this car on one of our lifts. So I took a picture. It made me happy.
Anyway, I think that is all I wanted to say. I shall see y'all at Christmas!
Pip pip, cheerio and all that.
~Dan
