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 4^th 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 17^th 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.