American spaceport at Cape Canaveral
The main attractions of Orlando are Disney World and the NASA spaceport at Cape Canaveral. It should be noted that Orlando received a powerful impetus for development thanks to the Disney company, which built a number of entertainment centers here in various parts of the city and beyond. Naturally, there were also hotels and shops and transport infrastructure necessary to receive visitors. There are many mixed forests and reservoirs around the city. The city is exceptionally well maintained and resembles a single park complex, where lakes and canals, forests and glades, fountains and hotels, roads and squares, entertainment centers and shops complement each other.
Due to a long move from Miami to Orlando, we only had 1 free day left, and we decided to dedicate it to the American spaceport at Cape Canaveral. There are many Disneylands all over the world. And the American spaceport or, as it is called here, the Kennedy Space Center - one.
Since Orlando is focused on visiting guests, there is a tour desk in the hotel lobby, where we booked an excursion of interest to us. It turned out that if you go to the spaceport on your own transport, then its cost is $38, and if you go by bus, then plus another $57 per person. At the same time, the tour desk got maps of Orlando and Disney World.
At 8-15 the next morning we reached the square, where a tour bus arrived at 8-30 and took us, along with others, to the NASA space center at Cape Canaveral. An hour and a half later we arrived at the place and the first object of visit was the Museum of Cosmonautics.
Among the many exhibits in the museum - photographs, space suits, simulators, spacecraft, rocket models and launch complexes - there is also a copy of our first artificial Earth satellite.
The museum was surprised with what humor the Americans admit their defeat in space exploration. Here on the stand there is a large photograph of a detachment of American astronauts from the early 60s, and under it the main question: “Which of them will be the first? ” And on the next stand, a portrait of Gagarin and the inscription “The first person to circle the Earth in 107 minutes on April 12.1961, the Russian Yuri Gagarin is a major in the Soviet army.
The museum also has a centrifuge, where anyone can feel the overload that a pilot experiences when flying a military aircraft. The cabins not only rotate, but also move in a vertical plane, simulating the maneuvers of an aircraft. Usually people get out of the cabs swaying. During rotation, I also had a moment when the monitor screen “floated” before my eyes.
Near the museum, life-size American rockets stand in an open area. Among them there is also a model of our carrier, which put the first Earth satellite into orbit. The lying giant Saturn-5 rocket from the American lunar odyssey makes a special impression.
A separate area is dedicated to reusable spacecraft. There is a shuttle here, which can be entered via a flyover, and next to it on a pedestal is the Columbia launch vehicle - the upper stage of the shuttle. In the adjacent building there is an auditorium where visitors can watch a film about the creation of ships and also a hall with active seats, where you can see all the phases of the launch and exit of the shuttle into orbit and feel the vibration and overload that astronauts experience during takeoff.
Tourists can then board special NASA buses and visit other spaceport facilities. From the window of the bus, you can see from a distance of 100 m the assembly shop, the launch pad and the caterpillar tractor for the Columbia spacecraft.
Buses make several stops at pavilions prepared for the public. One of them is dedicated to the lunar program of the Americans. In the huge hall, the Saturn launch vehicle is installed, dissected into steps, as well as the Apollo manned spacecraft and the Lunar Module, which ensures the astronauts descend to the lunar surface and return to the manned spacecraft. A film about the preparation and launch of the Saturn-Apollo spacecraft is shown in the hall. Very effective shots showing a trickle of a mixture of gaseous hydrogen and oxygen coming out of the nozzle of the rocket, a sheaf of sparks flying at it, then a flame appears - the engine is started, then a sea of fire - thrust is turned on, the rocket leaves the Earth and in clouds of fire and smoke goes up.
Then an announcer appears who says with a smile that we watched the story about the preparation of the expedition and the launch of the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon, and the story of how the astronauts went to the Moon is another story. And that's where the movie ends. Thus, NASA does not confirm or deny the legend and the ongoing debate about whether the Americans were on the moon 30 years ago or whether the public was presented with a film montage filmed in Hollywood.
Next to this pavilion there are stands for honored guests watching the launches of spacecraft, which are usually shown on TV. The starting complexes from here are hardly guessed in the distance - a few kilometers beyond the lake.
The bus also stops in a small town south of the launch sites, where there is a modern center, mission control, production workshops for assembling spacecraft components. Here, tourists are shown gyms that imitate fragments of the Mir space station, which is currently operating in orbit.
Unfortunately, it was not possible to see all the space objects envisaged by the program due to heavy rain, a phenomenon quite typical for this region in the afternoon. At 17-30 the tour ended and our bus took us to Orlando.
