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| "Everything is A-OK!" Gary seated in a mock up of a Mercury capsule at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. |
After bringing S/V Pandion to Port Canaveral, we decided to take a few days off from sailing to let the weather pattern of big afternoon thunderstorms along the coast settle out, and go adventuring.
One of the great stories that we learned at Kennedy was how the space shuttle program began, with a team of engineers under the leadership of Dr. Max Faget. In 1969, just as NASA was gearing up for our first landing on the moon with Apollo, Dr. Faget built a small glider and flew it at his team. When they asked what it was, he informed them that they were going to design a reusable spacecraft that would be capable of flying back to Earth from orbit. Only 12 years later, Columbia made it's first flight.
We rented a car and spent the day exploring the Kennedy Space Center, a birthday gift to me from Brenda. What a cool place! I had first visited the Space Center over 25 years ago, along with my brother Michael and my Dad (both engineers) and we had all been impressed by the size and scale of NASA's Saturn V rocket that took men to the moon.
This recent visit was amazing. NASA has added new museums and displays that highlight the early days of the manned space program, and the Atlantis space shuttle.
My younger brother Michael, an aeronautical engineer, watched the last launch of the Atlantis from Cape Canaveral during a visit to Florida with his family back in 2011. The launch had special significance to him, as it was the last flight of the space shuttle program. Battling ALS, he passed away only three years later. So it was especially poignant for me to see this impressive spacecraft up close, back at the Cape from where it had launched 33 times. Michael would have loved it!
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| Brenda and I in front of the space shuttle Atlantis. This impressive spacecraft flew on 33 missions before retiring in 2011. |
One of the great stories that we learned at Kennedy was how the space shuttle program began, with a team of engineers under the leadership of Dr. Max Faget. In 1969, just as NASA was gearing up for our first landing on the moon with Apollo, Dr. Faget built a small glider and flew it at his team. When they asked what it was, he informed them that they were going to design a reusable spacecraft that would be capable of flying back to Earth from orbit. Only 12 years later, Columbia made it's first flight.
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| Dr. Max Faget's balsa wood frame glider that launched NASA's space shuttle program. |
After a few days, the weather shifted in our favor. We threw our dock lines off at sunrise and headed out into the Atlantic, sailing north along the coast for Ponce DeLeon Inlet, a trip of 60 nautical miles.
More adventures to come!
Gary, that's not how one sits in a port-a-potty.
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