Tue 31st July





I've just heard I'm Johnny's second person to go to the Kennedy Sace Centre with!! Rach





I was just saying to Rach that going around Kennedy Space Centre with a fellow geek would have its benefits.





Anyway today has been a busy day we set off about 830 for Cape Canaveral, stopping at IHop for breakfast of pancakes American Style (sort of thick fluffy things rather than your conventional crepe orientated Shrove Tuesday kind of thing). In the cafe there was a guy going around doing balloon modelling for tips. He was a teacher on his long holidays earning a bit extra, I mentioned to Rachel that it is an idea for next year, the kids could dress up as little munchkins and assist, we'll see if Liverpool is ready for this.

Pancakes consumed, baloon things enjoyed we set off for the Cape. Quite a long drive at least by popping to Disney standards that we are now used to, in a fantastically straight line. This brought us to The Kennedy Visitors Centre. Professional theme park people as we now are we made an immediate B line for the Shuttle Launch Experience. This was an excellent ride where you rotate up and go through a launch simulation. Preceeded by a witty talk and video. Definetly worth it, coming out from this was a spiral staircase with a plaque and summary of each space shuttle mission. It's amazing how they all added up.

Having been on the shuttle experience the kids a bouyed up by the thought that this boring Dad outing is maybe not as bad as they thought. We have been dealing with Space a bit over the last few days, we've been twice to Mars and fought off aliens while rescuing space colonist just yesterday, this can make boring old Nasa type space a bit dull. This does make it more difficult to make the point that today we are seeing real things rather than pretend things, perhaps especially as it began with a ride on a pretent space shuttle.




After a swift loop around a full scale Shuttle Orbitor that didn't do anything we went to the IMAX for a 3D film on the moon. Again tricky to explain here that the 3D bits were simulations some of them of real things that happened and some of things that might have happened but didn't the 2D bits are films of real happenings. The film also took the mickey out of the conspiracy theorist with a 2D portion of an obviously pretent moon landing. Try and keep a 6 year old on the reality straight and narrow with that little lot. Especially as the film makers were trying to keep the audience awake by showing sequences of the moon buggy and then adding a what if it had crashed sequence, surely the moon landings were exciting enough without having to add bits, but perhaps being 50 miles from Disney makes you have to compete for your audience.



Further complexity when we went around a series of exibitions of robot probes. In this one the 'Robot Scouts' all spoke and there was an additional happy space probe that acted as Narrator. Leading to tricky explainations "Yes Viking did land on Mars, no it didn't speak back, yes it is now dead." How does the childhood mind cope.



I was surprised when the highpoint of the day was an Astronaut John Blaha http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Blaha giving a 20 minute talk followed by questions and answers. The boys seemed engaged by this and it gave some interesting views on his work particularly as part of the MIR space station crew. The guys CV was enough to take your breath away, how did he pack it all in. Especially while taking time out to have his photo taken with admiring tourists. Normally I would have thought the idea of having our picture with 'An Astronaut' was a bit twee, but we were all impressed, so we were all keen to be in the shot and he was gracious enough to line up with admirers. I feel this is a better role model for kids that Britney.

Johnny