Kennedy Space Centre

The Kennedy Space Centre is about a 70km drive from Orlando, so we set off bright and early down the maze of toll-roads...

... with an important stop along the way for IHOP.  What would a trip to America be without IHOP?

We saw this in the parking lot next to the IHOP - I can't believe that it's legal to drive with a giant lobster on your car.  Imagine how little visibility that driver has?!

Luckily we didn't see the rest of his risk on the highway (yes, the collective noun for a group of lobsters is a risk), and we made pretty good time to...

The Kennedy Space Center.  

Maybe they will give us jobs?  Working for NASA would be almost as awesome as working for the company that makes the giant robotic arm rollercoasters.

Luckily for us, it was 33 days until the last space shuttle launch - so the Space Shuttle Atlantis wasn't in this building (the giant building where they put it together).

It was on the launch pad, getting ready for its final flight.  We couldn't get very close, but it was an awesome sight.

They had some interesting exhibits, including a couple of videos and a recording of the Apollo 8 launch - this room was apparently the control room for the launch, and the desks light up as you hear the occupant talking on the radio during the countdown.  The Apollo 8 was the first manned spaceflight to leave Earth orbit.

And here's a rocket - they were amazingly big.  The badges next to the rocket are the mission patches for each of the Apollo missions, with the one at the front being Apollo 8.

 This is one of the 5 exhausts for the rocket, to give an idea of scale.

One of the crew capsules from the Apollo missions - check out how burned it is from reentry.

This is one of the new design of Orion rockets that they're building to replace the existing space shuttles.  From what we could tell, rather than piggy-backing on the rocket boosters like the current space shuttles, this design would sit on top of the rocket, much like the old Apollo designs.

And here's a replica of the Explorer space shuttle, which you can walk inside.  Big cargo bay, not much living room.

Next to the Explorer is the stuff that gets it off the ground - fuel tank and rocket boosters.  Absolutely massive.

Memorials for the astronauts killed during missions.  It looks like a lot until you think about the fact that they were flying to the moon, using computers the size of houses that were less powerful than my mobile phone.  I'm surprised they didn't blow the entire earth up, to be honest.

It's not a laughing matter, but I find this memorial a little amusing because it's so much bigger than it needs to be for the names it currently contains - someone's planning for the future.  It seems a little heartless to leave a lot of empty space for the names of the next people to get killed... but I guess it's more efficient that way.

The rocket garden.  It's interesting how different all of the designs are.

There were a number of different capsule replicas here for the children (and Stephen) to play inside.  There really wasn't a whole lot of personal space in these things.

If you thought the last one was cramped, how about this one?  I hope the astronaut was shorter than Stephen, because he couldn't even sit down properly in this one.

We had a lot of fun in Orlando, and 3 days is a good amount of time to get away from work.  Now we just need to work out where to go next!