NASA!

This post is part of a series. You can catch up with Cruzin’, Cruzin’: Day 2, Cruzin’: Day III, Mexico Adventures, Cruzin’ Day IV: Poison & Magic and Last Day Cruzin’

A quick note before we get going. This post covers a day and half but it’s a bloody long day and a half. You’re looking at 3,000 words so go put the kettle on.

Life is bright because we’re on the Brightline to Orlando. You may recall this photo from the previous post.

The Brightline runs up the East of Florida and is a privately run train that’s trying to be pretend it’s an airline. The stations have check-in, the waiting room is like an airport gate and they even have airliner-style carts selling snacks on the train.

Last night we had our final Blue Moon at the Mast Bar and snuck a generous tip of five US Dollars in with our last bill, but felt a little sheepish when the next person gave her an ostentatious $20. We read later on Facebook (there’s a group for this cruise) that some tipped their stewards $100, “although you’re free to tip whatever”. I just can’t get the hang of tipping. Perhaps I never will.

After our glamorous sojourn at Martini Bar, we headed for the pool deck for Greyhounds and then to the buffet to try to lighten the ship in the water. Didn’t work as we had been too greedy at lunch. Stocked up on whiskey and headed to the cabin to pack.

The last day is an early start as they want you off the ship so they can clean it and get the next batch of cashed up bogans elegant passengers aboard. It was dark when we awoke, then it rained. That cyclone is still prowling about.

On-shore it’s a warehouse of tape-barriers and queues as immigration officials scrutinise everybody’s documents. They let the ship’s staff check you on the way out but the INS official squinting at our passports has body armour with three banana magazines stuffed in the front. I guess he sees a lot of action.

The rain was pissing down but managed to find our Uber. There’s no shuttle bus from the cruise terminal to the airport or train station or anything, that would be communism. It was early and quite wet so Fort Lauderdale was quiet. Only the folks with no homes to go to were out and about. We saw two homeless men in dresses dancing in the puddles.

It strikes me that (at least this part) of Florida is divided into those who drive from safe place to safe place in a metal cocoon, and those who don’t and that those two groups don’t have a lot of contact with each other, which found me observing the homeless and derelict through the floor-to-ceiling windows, safe and secure in the Brightline departure hall, deep in thought and stroking my goatee.

I managed a window seat and the train to Orlando is pretty quick. The line runs up the East Coast, there is sand and scrub in places but no agriculture. Mostly light industry, with spur lines to service the many gravel-yards, flooring factories and so on. There were a surprising number of lock-up places. Lots of them next to trailer parks. I expect that, on your way down, you move into a caravan and store your household goods at the neighbouring lock-up. Just until you get on your feet again. Either that or it’s because the real-estate is cheap.

Florida as we know it today was shaped by the train. It was unusable wetlands swamp until some enterprising entrepreneur put in a train and some beach-side hotels to make it the holiday destination that it still is today. I guess this may be the same line, given the number of crossings and poor condition of the track.

The Brightline pretends to be an airline so it stops at the airport at Orlando. That suited us as we were staying at the Orlando Airport Marriott! Luckily, there’s a shuttle to the airport hotels from the station (Communism!) which saw us unpacking in a fairly well-used room that was probably quite swish in 1992 but now there’s boogers stuck to the wall. Here’s the view.

Yes, it’s a bit grim but could be worse.

There’s a liquor shop called Airport Liquor, next to Smoke Shop. They sell port.

Mrs Sachie has agents in every town and Orlando is one of them. Fellow Marriott-folk Chris and Stacy took us out to dinner at Rock Grill, a rock’n’roll-themed burger place. It’s a little sanitised, I had the Alice Cooper burger in honour of my grandmother, Alice Cooper. Chris and Stacy dropped us at Airport Liquor on the way back. They’re nice people and I wish we could spend more time with them.

But it was to be an early night to bed so we could get an early start on tomorrow’s adventure! NASA! Cape Canaveral! The gateway to the moon!

And there’s Mrs Sachie under the business end of a Saturn V first stage. Those F1 engines are almost big enough for me to stand up in.

There’s no bus or anything to Kennedy Space Centre, so it’s a $57 Uber ride out. I reckon you could hire a car for the day for that but both of us are allergic to driving.

It’s still raining and grey, which is shame because the rocket garden is lovely.

There’s a collection of mostly pre-Apollo multistage rockets here and they run a tour to talk about them, but it was too wet. We got under cover and found this plucky chap:

I believe that this is Opportunity, launched in 2003 and operated on the surface for 14 years, although it could also be Spirit, its twin.

But here’s a trick, did you know that these rovers were made out of LEGO?

Neither did I. We are learning already.

Instead, we queued up for the bus to see the Apollo exhibit halfway across the complex — big place this is. Here’s the building where they control the launches.

We didn’t stop. Here’s the VAB, or Vehicle Assembly Building:

We didn’t go in there either.

That’s the crawler, that takes the assembled rockets to the launch pad. We were not invited to check it out close-up.

Instead, we got off the bus and into a waiting room where they had some screens showing news coverage from the Apollo period. The 60s. Vietnam, Kent State and loads of assassinations. It was actually a bit odd and uncomfortable. What’s MLK’s murder got to do with space exploration? Great music though. We are heading into another period of politics by assassination but I’m worried that the soundtrack is going to be a bit rubbish. All along the Watchtower or The Sound of Silence were big back when the Kennedys were catching lead but I don’t hear iconic works like that today. Then again, the biggest hit in 1964 was King of the Road. There’s no accounting for taste and they didn’t play it in the presentation.

Eventually you’re shuffled to the next room, it’s awesome.

That is the original control consoles from the Apollo control centre. The OG-HID for human space exploration.

You sit in a gallery of seats and they play the soundtrack of the Apollo 11 launch. I desperately wanted to get down there and twiddle some knobs or don a headset but they discourage such things.

These days, everything is done by computers. That is, Turing machines, or universal computers. Back then, everything was wired for a dedicated purpose, at great expense. These days, you have a computer (more powerful than the ones that took men to the Moon) just to run a video display. I think I would feel more important, and special, operating a purpose-built console for launch than clacking away on a Logitech keyboard and mouse.

But, never mind. After the presentation you’re let into the main hall. where they have…

A WORKING SATURN V!

This was supposed to be Apollo 19, but the mission got cancelled (damn you American tax-payers!) so it’s preserved here for us to look at. It is… deeply impressive.

The rocket is divided into stages and suspended for us to look at.

Here’s the top end of the first stage:

And some fan-service for the space-nerds, a good look at the F-1 engine. At the top of the engine-bell you can see the expansion chamber for the turbopump that pumps fuel into the engine skirt to cool it and stop the skirt from melting and to vaporise the fuel before it enters the flame chamber.

She’s a big fucker:

Here’s the top of the second stage. That’s the head of a cryogenic fuel tank.

Next stage.

Here’s the business end, the command module.

They have a couple of these holographic chambers, where they keep the souls of old astronauts who will spin you a tale of space exploration.

There were other artifacts sprinkled about. Here’s a suit suitable for the lunar surface.

Here’s a Moon buggy.

If it looks like they just strapped some lawn-chairs to an electric lawnmower but actually, lawn chairs and ride-on electric mowers are inventions from the Apollo program.

Now here’s a real lunar module, never flown of course.

And here are some astronauts working on their moon-golf. They regularly train here to perfect their swing so less time is wasted on the lunar surface.

This is the view inside the lunar lander. You’ll notice there are no chairs, the astronauts sat in some hammock-like arrangement to save a bit of mass. In the original plans the lander was much grander but they cut every possible feature to make it light.

Looks roomy here but it was actually pretty cramped.

Now what’s this?

Unlike many of the exhibits they have a hole in the glass and you’re encouraged to reach in and touch it. Nothing like my experience at the Louvre! What could it be?

Yep, the quick ones in class got this straight away. It’s a bit of the moon! And don’t I have dainty hands?

There are a bunch of other artefacts around the place. Below is the first jetpack, although it’s not really a pack. The astronaut would hang on and get jetted around with compressed gas. I believe that this was used on the first US spacewalk, or EVA. I don’t know what the shoes were, maybe they were also on the first space-walk. Adidas, it would appear.

And here we have the door that trapped the first Apollo crew while they were incinerated in their capsule during a test.

In small spacecraft like this they typically keep the air as 1/3 pressure and pure oxygen, so that oxygen is the same partial-pressure as it is here in Florida (at sea-level) and the astronauts are kept comfortable and alive. The trouble is that any combustion, even something that would soon fizzle out here in Florida on Earth turns into a bomb when it’s bathed in pure oxygen. Things that don’t normally burn become quite merry. Things like electrical insulation and people. I think the door was made to open to the inside to keep air pressure in, which makes sense if it’s a vacuum outside but when the atmosphere became very hot indeed it made opening the door impossible.

Luckily it was all OK and you can see the astronauts are still here. Hi guys!

Let’s have a look at another burnt command module.

That’s the arty B&W shot, here’s one in colour.

This one is all burned up an discoloured because it has re-entered the atmosphere. You will notice that the door opens outwards. This one flew.

Sachie says that she wouldn’t get in that thing.

To jump ahead, I spent a ton of money in the gift shop and came away with this cool coffee cup and shotglass.

And here’s Lovell’s spacesuit. Well, the clothes he wore on the trip. He stayed in the command module while Neil and Buzz puttered about on the Moon. He was further away from other people than anybody else alive. He still is: the most isolated human, not alive unfortunately. I find it curious that this jumpsuit has a natty collar.

Well, this one already has a caption. Space-gloves.

Below we have the computer that took men to the moon. It’s as powerful as… the computer that took men to the moon. Of course, this isn’t all of it, this is just the HID (Human Interface Device). The actual machine was much bigger.

Here we have Alan Shepard’s Mercury spacesuit, the one he wore when he fought Gargantua.

Unfortunately, Gargantua’s suit was a bit more robust. Joking aside, they have a bunch of moon-suits that they were trying out on display and this is a hard-shell model.

And that’s it for the moon. We got back on the bus and headed back to the main park to look at this T-38. NASA astronauts fly around in these things for training and fun and they would jet between NASA facilities in them, being dashing test-pilot types.

And next door is the Space Mirror Memorial that remember the astronauts who crashed their T-38s or otherwise died in service.

Next stop was the shuttle exhibit. There’s a queue for this and you have to go through another presentation.

For this one you queue up on some ramps in the building and watch a film about the frustrations of the shuttle programme. NASA wanted a space-truck but the USAF wanted the starship Enterprise. In the end they got a pretty expensive but capable spaceplane. The presentation builds excitement until the first launch, with a countdown and them the screen rises up and THERE’S THE SPACE SHUTTLE ATLANTIS. It was right behind the screen all along!

Whoops, not that one. Here it is:

I really can’t describe it as anything but FUCKING AWESOME! It’s a little smaller than I expected, perhaps it would be kinder to say ‘more compact’. But it’s fresh from its last landing. You can see scorches from reentry and OMS (Orbital Maneuver System) burns. It’s really something.

See what I mean? I appreciate that it’s not spick-and-span. This thing just came down from low Earth orbit.

As you can see below, the crew compartment isn’t very big, but it does extend down and you can see the rescue/bail-out system that they installed after Columbia.

This is the rear of the crew compartment. There’s the remote-control TV camera (as opposed to the remote-control TV) that they would use to supervise operations in the cargo bay. Or if an astronaut needs to do a piece to camera or something. They have a window too, that you can see at the top.

And here she is in 360.

Here you can see that Canadarm. There’s no manipulator attached to the end at the moment. They’d control this from the crew compartment with said window and TV camera.

And here’s a look at the cargo bay. Once out of the atmosphere, they’d open up the doors because the door underside has radiators. All work creates heat and there’s no good way to get rid of heat on a spacecraft. The least-bad is to radiate it away as infrared light with enormous panels.

Here’s another look in 360.

And here’s the empanarge. You’d call it the tail but empennage  is the whole assembly of control elements at the rear end of a plane. The shuttle doesn’t have horizontal stabilisers but it does have these big OMS nozzels.

Here’s a closer look. These things would be used to maneuver in orbit.

These are the engines that would help the shuttle get into orbit. The launch system consisted of two solid-rocket motors which were strapped to the sides of the fuel tank, the big orange thing in the middle. The solid rocket boosters would burn out and come down by parachute to get re-used (take that Elon Musk) but the big orange fuel tank contained liquid oxygen and hydrogen that would be burned in these engines. The flame is colourless, mostly. At the bottom-right you can see a big tiled platform thing. That’s actually a control-surface and can move up and down to give some pitch authority or be an air-brake.

Here’s a look at one of those engines. It’s pretty complicated. I hope this one stays here because all the remaining shuttle engines in stock are being used on the SLS and are not recovered after launch. They’re making new ones that are a bit simpler and cheaper. They’ll run out of old ones after the first few launches and then start throwing away the cheap ones too.

Here’s the business end. That’s a tiny flame chamber at the top of the bell.

Now what’s this with it’s docking-petals. No hatch on the other side for the people to get in and out?

No crew required, it’s the Hubble Space Telescope!

Not the real one of course, that’s still in orbit. This is a spare or maybe one of the ones the NRO gave NASA a few years ago. That’s right, NASA made one of these and put it in orbit where it does amazing work to this day, but the National Reconnaissance Office made a bunch, and they point down.

Here’s the control panel at the back of the shuttle crew compartment with its little window. The joystick controls the Candarm. Or the TV camera, I don’t know.

Thanks for sticking with me so far, here’s the payoff. I give you… THE SPACE TOILET!

The seat is for ‘number 2’ and the hose at the top-right of the picture handles liquids. I read Scott Kelly’s autobiography, Endurance, and he had to take apart and fix the ones on the ISS on the regular. Can’t be much fun. Still, it beats the arrangement for the Apollo missions, they had to shit in a bag.

Here’s Sachie pinching one off.

Another nostalgic favourite is the Airstream van that ferried the Apollo astronauts to and fro about the launchpad.

Looks pretty nice inside. It’s nearby that they have a daily astronaut encounter. You pay, I don’t know, $40 or something, and get to sit on his knee for ten minutes while he spins tales from beyond the wild blue.

Time was running out for us and there was a queue for the astronaut encounter so we headed off to the next building where they have some more recent spacecraft. Here’s a Dream Chaser, the spaceplane that’s supposed to fly next year. I guess not this example, but it’s still cool.

Down there is an Orion, I think a real one that was used for testing. Above it is one of the Falcon Heavy boosters that was used on the first flight.

I watched the launch live and saw the iconic footage of the two boosters returning to the launch pads and landing simultaneously. Here’s another look.

There are the Merlin engines. Each can gimbal independently.

And here’s a Dragon capsule. This is the first one to fly, uncrewed of course. When it re-entered it landed on this display under its own power.

This is a model or mock-up for the Starliner.

This one I thought was very important. This is a real microsatelitne. Never flown I guess. It’s a bit smaller than a shoebox and they’re cheap enough to build and get into low earth orbit that universities regularly send them up.

But, it’s 5pm and the place is closing so it’s time to order an Uber and get back to the hotel. The Uber was $87 (!) and it was raining. The driver explained that, due to the incoming cyclone, he may have to evacuate tomorrow.

KSC was great and I really could have spent another happy full day there, especially if it was sunny. I wish that they had fewer mock-ups and more real artefacts but it’s still very cool.

Hurricanes were on the news and they announced that there was a limit of ten sandbags per-person, which made me nostalgic for the days of the Bangkok flood when they were selling for Bt1,000 each. We stopped at Airport Liquor where people were talking about the fact that supermarket shelves were emptying and that it was all the fault of the mainstream media reporting of the hurricane when it really wasn’t much of the bother. Weird place the US is.

We couldn’t agree on where to eat dinner, there really was no good choice so it was pint-sized cans of beer and pretrials, my favourite, and an early night as tomorrow we were flying away from Orlando, home of Disney World to the home of Disney Land — LA!