Visiting Kennedy Space Center
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I'll be in Florida next month, and will take a day to check out the Kennedy Space Center. I'm not going to lie... I'm geeking out a bit. I'm not the biggest NASA expert (or an expert at all), but have enjoyed diving deep into a few books, magazines, and of course the movies. I watched First Man the other day (really enjoyed it, fantastic original score too). I know most of the site is off-limits, but man it is fun to look on the satellite map and view the launch pads where the shuttles went up (mostly 39B), the Apollo pad (39A), and even the now (sadly) overgrown/vacant pads used for Gemini and Mercury missions.
I guess the biggest takeaway as I look at it is the value of getting that perfect swamp/beach land decades ago to establish such a wide range of launch sites, vehicle or rocket assembly buildings, and so forth.
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I visited there during the early 80s. We were operating a data center in the blockhouse.
At that time they didn't have the big visitors center yet. You could drive your car right up to pad 39A, unthinkable in today's world.
There was a Saturn V parked in the parking lot, the regular car parking lot, you could park right next to it. The F1 engine bells had birds nests in them. Now that Saturn V has been refurbed and has it's own climate controlled home.
