After a lengthy bus trip which while was a long time 75 minutes we were well educated on the way with our driver explaining all the sites as well as great information about the Kennedy Space Centre like; last year Orlando had 105 million visitors (it is the theme park capital of the world) with 105 million going through to Disney World but only 5 million went out to Kennedy Space Centre. NASA does so much research for the world that we just take for granted and some of these items we use every single day – LEDs, Infrared Thermometers, Artificial Limbs, Super Soakers, Memory Foam, Invisible Braces, Water Filters, Insulation as you can see NASA is involved in a vast range of categories and the list goes on and on.

Back to our experience, it was highly educational and well worth the trip to see, listen and meet astronauts share their experiences on what it is like to go to space, in particular John-David Bartoe who was 40 when he got his chance opportunity to go into space.

We sat on another bus tour to see 2 launch sites with one of the being “top secret” known as 38A and the other launch site 39 was used for the launch on the Atlas 5 (cargo supply for the ISS), another interesting fact is that 60 lady astronauts have travelled into space with the longest serving American astronaut in space is Peggy Whitson who on Monday 24/04 elected to stay on for another 3 months on board the International Space Station.

The International Space Station
Launched in 1998 and involving the U.S., Russia, Canada, Japan, and the participating countries of the European Space Agency—the International Space Station is one of the most ambitious international collaborations ever attempted. The largest space station ever constructed, the ISS continues to be assembled in orbit. It has been visited by astronauts from 18 countries—and counting. The International Space Station Program brings together international flight crews, multiple launch vehicles, globally distributed launch, operations, training, engineering, and development facilities; communications networks, and the international scientific research community.

We all had a very good day today learning so much about the importance of NASA and the co-operation from other countries all around the world, it makes me wonder if we can work together to improve our race and look at expanding to the moon – why do we have war zones!

The themes we experienced today were;

• Rocket Garden
• Heros & Legends
• Astronaut Encounter
• Space Shuttle Atlantis
• Space Shuttle Launch Simulator
• Bus Tour (launch lads, vehicle assembly building, launch control centre)
• Journey to Mars

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