Tour of NASA Kennedy Space Center

This is one view of the VAB (vehicle assembly building. This, in my opinion, is the most recognizable icon of the Kennedy Space Center next only to the rockets themselves. It is inside the VAB that the manned rockets are stacked for launch.

The VAB was repainted just weeks before this picture was taken. The flag was repainted, and the old bicentennial star logo was painted over with the NASA "meatball" logo.

This building is HUGE, and I think the fact that it is pretty much a featureless cube belies its size. When you live around here, you get so used to seeing it, that you have to remind yourself that it may be 20 miles away. It is 525 feet high. Compare that to the Washington monument at 555 feet high. The roof has an area of over 1 acre. The KSC VAB is the 2nd largest building by volume in the world after the Boeing jumbo plant in Washington state (and I've been in that building, too). The drivers on the bus tour always point out that the bus can be driven down one of the stripes on the flag painted on the side (assuming a tour bus can climb walls.)

The Saturn V moon rocket was stacked with it's gantry tower inside the VAB, and slipped through the doors with a lot of room to spare. (Saturn V was 366 feet tall.)

Columbia in the OPF (Orbiter Processing Facility). You don't see this on the tour! You certainly wouldn't get this close!

This is the tank and SRB (solid rocket Booster) stack for STS-88, the first US space station launch. The tank is the second super lightweight external tank. The bright "wall" in the foreground with the railing is the edge of the actual launch platform. We are so close, if it fell over, it would crush us. They don't even let the tour busses drive near the live solid rocket boosters, and I'm standing next to them.

Note that the VAB is 525 feet high, and the Shuttle only stands 186. The VAB dwarfs the Shuttle.

This is the crawler-transporter that carries the shuttle to the launch pad. There are two of them, and they are named Hans and Franz. The shuttle is assembled on the actual launch platform in the VAB. Then the crawler-transporter lifts the platform, carries it to the pad, and sets it down on posts. Each link in the tread weighs one ton. I think we were told that each crawler has 500 miles on it. That's a lot of three mile trips to the pad.

This is the inside of one of the firing rooms. It came as a surprise to me to discover that there are four firing rooms in the LCC (Launch Control Center).

Ever wonder what it's like to launch a shuttle? This is the view of pad 39B from the firing room. That is STS-95 Discovery on the pad, most commonly known as John Glenn's ride.

This is Node 1 of the ISS (International Space Station), or Unity, just a few weeks before being launched and attached to the FGB Zarya

You can see this high bay on the regular tour, but they keep you back from the windows with railings, and the walls block your view of most of the room. We didn't have that problem on the open house.

I was dumbfounded to discover that we could drive to the pads! You don't get within 1-1/2 miles of the pads on the tour. This is pad 39A. STS-88 will be launched from here in a few weeks. There is a road that circles the pad inside the fence. We got to drive around that road.

If you thought I was dumbfounded we could drive to an empty pad, imagine my delight that we could drive to a pad with a live shuttle on it.

This is Discovery STS-95. We could not drive around the pad as we did at 39A, but could drive up to it and back out. I would like to have gotten better pictures, but we were instructed not to stop, and I was elected by my buddies to drive that day. I would like to have gotten a closer picture, but wasn't able to change lenses while driving.

I was bothered at first that that van was there just as the picture was taken, but later decided that it added perspective to the crawler-transporter beside it.

Our last stop was the SLF (Shuttle Landing Facility). In fact, a guard waved us in just as she was closing up the gate and taking down the signs.

SLF is a fancy name for the runway. The runway is 15,000 feet long, and 300 feet wide. That is about 50% longer and twice as wide as runways at most large airports. Many single-engine planes could take-off and land along the width of the runway!

The runway made a boring picture. This is the mate/demate facility. It is the crane assembly that lifts the shuttle up onto its transporter, or onto the 747 shuttle aircraft.

The plane in front is the Gulfstream used to practice shuttle landings. The controls are modified to make it behave like the orbiter. I understand that the engines are actually put in reverse to make the plane descend as steeply as the orbiter.

This is the shuttle landing facility from the air.

This is launch complex 39 from the air. Pad 39B is the one to the left (north end of picture) and pad 39A is to the right (south).