Abbey and I watched the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral! We were 6 miles away at the Kennedy Space Center. It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. It lit up the night sky and you could feel it in your chest. We even saw the re-entry burn of the 1st stage as it came back to Earth and successfully landed upright.

I had wanted to get some good pictures of the launch. I had my tripod and camera set up an hour beforehand, and had the camera in full manual with everything adjusted to my best reckoning for what the launch was going to be like. But when T-0 came, and the rocket lifted off, it was SO MUCH BRIGHTER than I ever could have imagined. The rocket lit up the sky like the rising sun and my attempted picture was grossly overexposed. Oh well. I ignored the camera and just watched the launch in awe. Abbey took this video with her phone.

We spent a full day at Kennedy Space Center from gates open to gates closed. That really isn’t enough time because this place is incredible. I think I had a giant smile on my face the whole time. I had to keep myself from running between exhibits. It was so cool.

My old car had 360 horsepower. The cruise ship Abbey and I were recently on had 100,000 horsepower. The Saturn V rocket had 160,000,000 horsepower.

The exhibits, and particularly the presentation, borders on perfection. After watching an introductory video about the shuttle program and the Atlantis, the entire movie screen rises and suddenly the real Atlantis is right in front of you.

There was a memorial to the Challenger and Columbia that was simple, sobering, yet motivating. This piece of the shuttle had no descriptive plaque, just itself in a darkened room.

Engineers tried a number of different coatings on the space helmets to protect astronaut eyes from the sun. An ultra-thin coating of 24k gold was the only coating tested that provided this protection without changing the color perception of the astronaut.

The lunar buggy had mesh tires!

The actual Mars rover only weighed about 130 pounds more than this Lego 1:1 scale model.

What a great place. I already want to go again.

Cheers!