John writes: We had delayed our
departure from St Augustine a day to take
advantage of some beam winds for the 110 mile trip down to Cape
Canaveral, so that we could enjoy a decent sail. So last Saturday
the 4th December we
enjoyed a great trip down the coast in bright sunshine, averaging 8-9 knots. As
the sun went down in a blaze of orange in a cloudless sky, we realised that all
the lights on the shore were in fact the different launch pads of the NASA
space centre – and there in the middle, was the Space Shuttle Discovery attached to her three rockets,
pointing skywards and waiting for her launch scheduled for 17th December. As so often, we were the only vessel on
the ocean, and it was an extraordinary feeling to be so connected and yet so
isolated.
The tickets to
the Kennedy Space Centre are valid for two days, but that scarcely gave us
enough time at this amazing site. If you haven’t been, and you’re
in Florida
– do visit!
It really is
difficult to describe the Kennedy Space Centre without lapsing into
superlatives. To ride in the Shuttle launch simulator, to marvel at the size of
the Saturn V rockets that launched the Apollo moon missions, to see and touch
the extraordinarily cramped one and three-man space capsules, to experience the
3D
I-Max cinemas,
to talk to an astronaut, to share some of the intense pain of the tragedies,
left both of us awestruck.
We have
perhaps all become almost blasé about space travel, but what has been achieved
in the last 45 years is bought to life brilliantly here. 114 missions, 945 days
in orbit, 79 space walks, 3 planetary satellites deployed, 26 commercial
satellites deployed, 28 research platforms deployed, 17 rescue/repair missions,
614 major payloads delivered. When you are here, you are left in little doubt
about the power and dangers of the rocket fuels that with Saturn V had the
power of a small nuclear bomb. Little details like the fact that in the last
four seconds before the launch of the Shuttle, one million litres of water are
dumped around the launch site to cool the blast and reduce the shock and blast
waves back onto the shuttle itself are staggering.
The Shuttle
orbiter Discovery may be about to make her last
flight, and this may be almost the last Shuttle flight for the foreseeable
future, but other rockets will launch from here, and indeed when we left this
morning we watched the Falcon 9 rocket launch, which is the new private sector
rocket to get payload into space. Like most firework displays, the start was
delayed a while, but it was still spectacular!
Much of the
work here now is on the ISS – the International Space Station –
which continues to grow as new modules are added. This together with the
information and images that the Hubble Space telescope is sending back is truly
mind blowing. One of the two I-Max films is about the Cosmos beyond our own
galaxy, and it was so amazing that we went back for a second viewing the next
day. A new space telescope is due to replace Hubble in 2013.
