Now we know how to get Harrison out of bed by himself in the morning - plan a trip to Kennedy Space Center!! Usually he waits for me to go into his room and turn off his equipment (even though he could do it himself). Today I went in to get him up and his bed was empty! I momentarily froze as it was the last thing I expected to see but quickly realised that he was already in the bathroom. Every morning, Bernard and I have been sitting outside by the pool. I'm usually in position with book, coffee and toast by 7am. It's too hard to resist the opportunity of spending one or two hours with a book. Something that I seldom get the chance to do at home.
We were all ready to leave the house by 9:30am with the route programmed into the sat nav app. For the second day running we hit heavy traffic on the 192 so decided to divert onto a toll road instead. Our rationale was that not as many people would want to pay to use a road. We were proved right which meant the rest of our journey was very straightforward. There's a huge amount of road development going on in the area where we're staying and it seems that wherever we want to go, we encounter road works. Nothing new to us!
On entering the park Harrison announced that this is the best day of his life ever! When asked if it was even better than meeting Lewis Hamilton, he couldn't decide. Our first activity at the Space Center was 'Lunch with an Astronaut'. We were all shown into a large room with several round tables all formally set up for a two course meal. It was a buffet lunch which included salads, hot courgette and squash mix, garlic roasted mini potatoes, macaroni cheese, grilled salmon and chicken pieces.
Dessert was a selection of mini tray bake cakes, cookies, jelly and melon pieces. Towards the end of our meal, astronaut Wendy Lawrence gave a presentation about life in space and then took questions. She's been on four launches and it was extremely interesting listening to her.
As we left our windowless dining room we could see that the weather had closed in and the skies were very dark. We decided that we should go and see as many of the external exhibits as possible before the rain soaked us. Harrison wasn't impressed with this decision as there were a few rumbles of thunder in the distance. He kept asking to go inside but not via any metal structures. Bit tricky when the whole park is constructed from sheet and tubular metal!
The nearest building was 'Angry Birds in Space' which was a good choice as it took his mind off the weather with the interactive games and activities.
We were probably only in there for around fifteen minutes but when we came out the walkways were showing evidence of a heavy downpour. Next we went into an education centre (Exploration Space) designed to highlight some of the different types of careers in the space industry.
There was a film presentation led by a NASA staff member. She'd learnt her script well but sounded rather like Stephen Hawking when delivering it. Bernard thought that it may have been part of her English language course. We weren't convinced that she actually understood what she was saying! Following this entertaining presentation Harrison wanted to go to the shop. He didn't have any trouble finding many souvenirs to spend his $350 on. In fact he got within 41 cents! In 16 years he's never parted with his money so readily. Considering that this was the main purpose of our visit we wanted to ensure that he bought everything that he wanted because it's a long way back from the UK!
By now the weather couldn't have been much worse - the rain was torrential and running down the roads.
We were due to catch a bus to the Saturn firing room as there was a launch of SpaceX planned for this evening. We had no idea about this when we booked our tickets a couple of weeks ago so this would be an incredible coincidence if it was to go ahead. We got on our bus ( mainly to shelter from the rain as we'd left our raincoats back at the house) and started chatting to the driver. Despite the appalling weather outside, he was quite optimistic that the launch could go ahead.
The weather over by the launch pads was clearing up quickly. We had a couple of hours to wait before launch so we went into the Saturn building to see a couple of films including a recreation of a launch. As we exited the theatre we were confronted by the rear of Saturn V. It was a breathtaking sight!
Approximately half an hour before launch we took our seats in the priority launch seating (where the astronauts families sit) and waited patiently. Wendy was hosting another question session and we also heard feeds from the control centre.
Unfortunately just before the 13 minute countdown was due, they postponed for another hour! Apparently there was a leak somewhere that needed to be investigated. There was a 53 minute window for take off. I've written most of this blog whilst waiting and they've just announced that launch is aborted - boo! There was just 10 minutes to go.
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