Day Five: Kennedy Space Center

This day, above all others, I am so glad we did.

Kenneth's science classes at school are very focused on biology - on animals. I'm not blaming his school at all; this is the normal thing for Norwegian schools. But he's not interested in biology, and I can identify with that. At his age, I was learning about airplanes and simple machines and the Solar System at school and found science much more interesting. It was probably my favorite subject.

So seeing a gleam in my son's eye because he got to hear a Real! Live! ASTRONAUT! speak did my geek mom's heart good.

The Visitor's Center area is huge, and we didn't even explore the areas that are only accessible by bus. Among other things, there's a huge IMAX theater; we saw a great 3D film about the International Space Station. But man oh man, I thought ordinary 3D movies made me queasy. Blow it up to a screen that big, and uh... eep. I'm told I was a very interesting shade of greyish-green when we came out of the theater.

But Kenneth's favorite area was definitely the Rocket Garden. The very biggest rocket, the Saturn V, is in another part of the complex, but the Saturn Ib in the main Rocket Garden is still quite impressive.

The two small dark smudges by the middle supports are full-grown adults, just to give you the scale here.

Kenneth was also fascinated by the full-sized mock-up of an Apollo capsule, which you can crawl into.

Kenneth is tall, but he's still quite slender. Imagine three broad-shouldered, full-grown men, in bulky space suits, lying there. They'd better get along pretty well!

All in all, a great day. We all learned a lot, and Kenneth discovered new interests.

We had just one day left - to see Disney-MGM Studios.

BACK to the Front Page ***** ONWARD to Day Six: Disney-MGM Studios

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Created 29 March 2005 * Last Updated 14 July 2005