Spacing Out

I put together a collage of video clips and still photos into a video to show some of the things we have been doing the last few weeks.  If it looks a little grainy, make sure that your YouTube settings are set to High Definition:

We spent our last night at the Florida Baptist Youth Camp.  As far as campsites go, it was a good one.  It was quiet, had full hookups, the price was right, and the neighbors were terrific.  We couldn’t ask for a better spot.  Maybe that’s why we stayed for three weeks.

We just pulled in to our new camping spot for this evening.  We’re at the Manatee Hammock Campground in Titusville, right near Cape Canaveral.  We arrived after dark and the office was closed so we were on our own to find our assigned campsite.  It took two circles around the campground to find it.  There are no campsite number designations anywhere, so we were going off a campground map that had no labels on the roads.  It should have been easy.  Just look for the only open campsite. But in a large crowded campground, an open campsite looks just like a single parking space.

Today we went to the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral.  I didn’t really research this all that much, just thought it would be cool to go see where all the rockets are launched.  I did look up the launch schedule and saw that there were no launches during the time we would be there.  Bummer.  That would have been cool to see. I really didn’t know what to expect, but what I didn’t really expect was a theme park.

We were standing at the front entrance, looking at the sign listing the entry fees, trying to pick our jaws up from the ground, when two other couples came up and had the same reaction we did. There was that moment of indecision and then the resigned “well, we’re here”, before they continued to the kiosk to pay their seventy bucks a head for entry.  We arrived at the same conclusion and soon were inside the complex, looking at the Rocket Garden.

I was strolling around the Rocket Garden, when I overheard someone ask a nearby park employee if any of these rockets had flown any actual missions.

“No ma’am,” he said. “If we wanted the real hardware, we would have to dredge it up from the bottom of the Atlantic.  These are all prototypes or replicas.”

At least they had replicas here.

We explored the Gateway, the newest exhibit building whose theme was deep space exploration.  I found this exhibit to be rather heavy on lights and sound and fluff and rather light on explanation.

I’m an engineer, give me some data!

I forgot to take a picture, so I got this one off their web site.  Complete with the purple lighting

One display was a touch screen in which you were supposed to choose the optimal time to turn on the oxygen and the hydrogen to get the pictorial rocket engine to ignite successfully.  My mission failed every time.  This type of display would probably appeal to someone more accustomed to the fast reactions needed in video games.

In real life, I would have just turned on the oxygen valve and the hydrogen valve and struck a match.  Works every time.

What I thought was hilarious was one display that described a living quarters needed for deep space exploration.   It explained that you have to plan and take all the supplies with you and you had to be self-contained.  The display showed a few things such as tiny sleeping areas, water storage, food storage, etc.  While the display did show an actual sleeping nook and a few other sort-of realistic looking items, most of the display appeared to be graphics printed on cardboard and it all looked rather cheap.

What was so funny about it is that I do all that right now.  It’s called living in an RV.  Nearly everything they described, except the adjustments that need to be made for zero-G, is exactly everything I need to do when traveling in a small RV.

I have a new name for my RV.  I’m gonna call it DSRV, for Deep Space RV.  We'll order matching logo jumpsuits.  Just call us RVnauts...

Retirement, the final frontier.

These are the voyages of the Sprinter van DeepSpaceRV.

It's mission: To explore strange and beautiful places,

To seek out the advancement of God's kingdom,

And to obediently go where the Lord leads.

(With a nod to Star Trek)

It wasn’t all cardboard and tinfoil.  There were a couple of bona fide artifacts there.  We were ushered through the launch control room for all the Apollo missions and they had an entire building dedicated to the space shuttle Atlantis.

We spent some time in the Atlantis building, including going on the launch simulator, which tipped you on your back and shook you around a bit and made some loud noises.

And, after a rather lengthy and theatrical introduction on the way into the building, the projection wall in front of us went clear and the Atlantis could be seen beyond, a silent reminder of a chapter in the space exploration story.  Artemis is the new thrust, although details are few.

We also took the bus tour to the Race to the Moon which presented details of the Apollo programs.  More theatrical presentations although there was a little more real stuff here, including a Lunar Rover trainer, a Saturn V rocket, and an actual piece of moon rock.  You could say I actually got to touch the moon. 

This place has another hallmark of theme parks:  Long queue lines and interminable wait times.  It’s a good thing we were here on a weekday and the traffic was lighter than usual.  Even with this, we spent a fair amount of time waiting in line.

We found the information presented here to be in a rather disjointed way.  Several times we were left wondering where to go, particularly when waiting in line, as the signage was rather sparse.  And queue lines often went around blind corners, leaving you to wonder just how long you would be waiting in line.

When it all shut down at 5pm, we went out for pizza and then got some groceries.  So it was dark when we finally arrived at our campground.  Tomorrow morning we’ll leave early for the Everglades.