One small step for man....

Endevour being prepared for lift-off on Feb 7
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Today we rose before the sun at 5.30am and grabbed a quick (and ugly) breakfast at the quick service cafe before catching a taxi to the Disney All Stars Movie Resort. This was the meeting point for pickup for our Kennedy Space Centre all day tour. We just had time to wander through the gift shop and be amazed at the trinkets and novelties on offer before our 8am pickup. After visiting four other resorts to fill our 13 seater van, we were off and rolling to the space centre. Funnily enough, there was a couple from Wellington Point and a couple from Melbourne on our tour, so us Aussies outnumbered all the others and definitely put everyone in a jovial mood.

Joe after splashdown... He made it home safely!
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Our first stop was the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame, where we watched a brief movie about the history of the space program and wandered through the displays marking the ‘Heroes” of NASA. We then had time to ourselves to view the interactive displays, and Joe and I rode the simulator that took us on a lunar landing to Mars, but did not have time to ride the gravatron.

... one giant step for these two travelling Aussies!

Workers working on International Space Station Modules..
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We then headed to the main NASA visitor centre, where we were given the rest of the day at leisure to explore the park. We immediately headed for the site bus tour that would take us around each of the three outer exhibits. The first of these was the LC-39 Observation Gantry, where we could see the Space Shuttle Endevour being prepared for its February 7 launch to deliver supplies to the International Space Station (ISS). There are only 5 more launches remaining of the shuttle program with the last launch currently scheduled for September this year.

One of the more recent spacesuits
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From here we were bussed over to the Apollo/Saturn V Centre which provided information and exhibits on the full Apollo program, viewing of the actual Saturn V rocket (which was huge!), and the Apollo 14 Re-entry Module. There was also a chronological history of space-suits and how they have changed over time. After lunch we watched a brief movie on the Apollo program which included the a visit into a simulated control room with the actual control consoles used during the first lunar landing, and then movie about the first steps on the moon. Unfortunately this movie had faulty audio and half of the dialog could not be heard. Those sitting near the front were lucky enough to be able to read the captioned monitors.

A section of the actual moon landing mission control
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It was then over to the final outer exhibit - the International Space Station Centre. Here we looked at information on the multi-nation program that is building the station which is now 85% complete. We saw broken down models of what makes up the space station, and were able to walk through life-size models of a number of the modules currently in use. We then walked to a viewing area which enabled us to look down on NASA workers in their blue “bunny” sterile suits finalising work on module “Leonardo” which contains supplies for the ISS.

Apollo 14 Re-Entry Module
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Upon our return to the main visitor centre, we headed straight over to the Shuttle Launch Experience ride, where once you were inside, you were moved from a horizontal seating position into a vertical position and given a simulation of what a pilot feels in an actual shuttle launch. This turned out to feel like a heavy back massage, and not the gut-curdling experience that I expected. We then wandered around the rest of visitor centre, including a walk into a half-scale version of the shuttle explorer, and a look at the Astronaut Memorial. At 4.30pm we caught the final showing in the IMAX theatre of a 3D movie about landing on the moon. After a final walk-through of the largest space shop in the world, it was back on the tour bus to take us back to the hotel.

Joe being dwarfed by Saturn 5 Rocket
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Home finally after 11hrs, we were looking forward to our dinner reservation over in the next resort building. With the temperature mildly improved since yesterday we decided to walk over, which was just as well, as we both ate way too much during our three course African spiced meal and mojito cocktails. During dinner we tried to formulate a plan of attack for our up-coming 3 day Disney World adventure. We shall see how much we can fit into the three full days we have here at Disney.