Day 3

Monday, March 20^th, 2000

Today we went to visit NASA. It was pretty cool. We got the "Maximum Access" pass shown at the left.

The pass was $26 per person and it included access to the complex, a three hour bus tour and two out of three I-MAX movies.

The first movie we saw was about the Space Shuttle program. The second was about the MIR space station. The third was a 3-D presentation about preventing an asteroid from hitting the earth. (We had seen this one on a previous trip. The 3-D effect was amazing!)

We took most of the pictures on the bus tour. It made three stops. On the way to the first stop, we got a close up view of the (huge) vehicle assembly building (VAB). That is where they mate the Orbiter with the External Fuel Tank and SRB's. It is several miles away from the launch pads.

After all the parts of the Shuttle have been assembled, an enormous mobile platform called "The Crawler" is used to transport the Shuttle to the launch pad. It moves at about 1 mile an hour and the total trip to the pad takes about 8 hours.

The first stop on the tour was the observation deck where the two launch pads, Pad 39A and Pad 39B, can be seen in the distance. These are the same two launch pads that were used for the Apollo missions. They are now used for Shuttle launches.

The second stop was at the SaturnV Center. It is a large building dedicated exclusively to the SaturnV and the Apollo program. We viewed a re-creation of launch control during the final 3 minutes of a SaturnV launch. On display in another area was an actual SaturnV rocket (all 360 plus feet of it). An actual Lunar Rover was also on display.

The final stop on the tour was the International Space Station Center. Actual-size models of various sections of the space station were on exhibit. There was also an area where the NASA engineers could be observed while at work assembling parts of real the Space Station.

After the tour, there was still plenty to do. They had several exhibits, monuments and stores located on the grounds which you could visit.