December 4-5 - 2017 Titusville, Florida

Our stay at Macon, Georgia was mainly because of the football game in Atlanta.
We also did some sightseeing, and quite a bit of shopping.
Macon is a city about the same size as Aalborg, but my guess is that it has at least 5 times as many stores, if not more. There are stores everywhere.
So, now we have to hurry back to museums, battlefields and nature before we run out of money, and room in our suitcases!! 😊

Monday, we made a major move. 400 miles/ca. 650 km from Macon to Titusville, Florida. Straight east of Orlando. A looong trip, but nice speed and nice roads (7½ hours). And back to almost 80F/25C temps - and shorts (it is supposed to cool off later this week though, and rain).
The campground is OK, but you can easily see that it took a beating by the hurricane Irma. Half of the campground is still closed, due to damages.

For years and years, I have been pestering (forpestet) and boring (kedet) my surroundings (family, colleagues, and not least of all employees) with the phrase “Man kan sende folk til månen i et jernrør” (You can put a man on the moon in an iron pipe). In reference to: Don’t come and tell me that this or that can’t be done!!  Today, Tuesday, we went to Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral. This is where the iron pipes took off from!!!

Sure looks like a "jernrør" to me !! 😊

This is how the Kennedy Space Center began the day. That was a surprise.
Also that everybody stopped. And we did not see anybody kneel!!😊

A very impressive place. If you are a space enthusiast, you cannot do that place in one day. We did though. The whole history is there:

Allan Shepard’s travel as the first American in space on May 5th, 1961. (The Soviets got Gagarin up there on April 12th, which made him the first human to enter outer space.)  Shepard’s flight was part of the Mercury program. The flight lasted only 15 minutes. Three weeks later President Kennedy raised the bar significantly when he vowed, that the US would put a man on a moon before the end of the decade!!! (There you have it: Get to work boys and girls! 😊)

 

After Mercury, followed the Gemini program, and eventually the Apollo program.
As we all know, NASA managed to reach Kennedy’s goal, when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, on July 20, 1969.  Considered the technological development 50 years ago, and with computer power a lot less than that of a modern smartphone, the moon landing has to be one of the biggest achievements in the history of mankind. 

The moon landing - Movie and artifacts together

 

A Danish newspaper - Middle of the bottom row.

The place is packed with artifacts, real ones: Rockets, spacesuits (some still with moondust), moon landing module, a spaceshuttle etc. etc. etc.

 

We think we have poor fuel economy. The transporter used to move the rockets from the assembly building (one of the biggest in the world), is going only 1 mph /1,6 kmt, but still fuel economy is as bad as 32 feet per gallon / ca. 2,5m per liter !!! (Thank you, Flemming)



Assembly building - Covers 3.25 hectares (8 acres/tønder land)
The flag is 209 foot (64 meter) tall

There is also a part about the next space program, Orion, the goal of which is to put a man on Mars, in foreseeable future. And also to reestablish the capability
of the US to send a person into space, which it has not been able to since the termination (afslutningen)of the Space Shuttle program in 2011.

There are many very interesting and informative movies. Some in 2D, and some impressive 3D movies.

In one of the movies astronaut Gene Cernan (Apollo 17) said: “Kids should go tell their teachers to strike the word impossible out of the dictionary (ordbog). If I can walk on the moon, nothing is impossible!!
I could not agree more!! 😊 😊

Written by JJ