It s hard to overstate the magic of being at this ...

It s hard to overstate the magic of being at this place. Seeing the VAB rise up over the Florida marshlands on our drive in took my breath away with its sheer scale. I ve only recently become a hardcore space junkie and this was my first trip to KSC, and I don t think I stopped smiling the whole time.

Even the basic bus tour which comes with the basic admission (~$60 per adult) was enough to make my heart race with excitement. Being so close to the place where the Apollo launch vehicles were assembled and transported to the launch pads gave me goosebumps. We were fortunate enough to visit on the day of the Orion launch escape system test, so we got a great view of the crawler making its way back down the crawlerway, both on our way out past launch pads 39A and B to the Apollo/Saturn V center and on our way back! That thing is a BEAST.

The Apollo/Saturn V center experience was fantastic. The intro movie and the Apollo 8 launch sequence recreation were a fantastic first and second course before taking in the massive visual feast that is a fully restored Saturn V rocket. I could have spent hours there just studying the plumbing of the F1 and J2 engines up close and personal. It truly is a marvel of modern engineering and a thing of mechanical majesty.



The American manned space program is one of the greatest achievements of human ingenuity and engineering, and to have the privilege of being here in the shadow of space history and get a taste of what s in store in the next decades as we return to the Moon and take our first steps on Mars is truly a life-changing experience.