NASA

3, 2,1 blast off. It’s one small leap for man, one giant leap for mankind.  That’s right it’s Nasa day for Sophie, Dan and Tim. When you turn up at Nasa you pay the $10 parking fee and then are directed to the area of the carpark for your vehicle. For us, it was car park 4. Once parked you take a 5 minute walk to the ticket machines, which are all screens and very easy to use. It’s $75 dollars plus tax for a 1 day ticket which when you get through the turnstiles and you see how much you get to do it’s well worth the money.

Once you get in you see the rocket garden straight in front of you and then the Heroes and Legends building, to the left, which includes 2x 7 minute shows and a walk around the rest of the building to really understand how many Heroes and Legends there really are for Nasa. This is where we learnt about Alan Shepherd, who in 1961 was the first American to fly into space and complete a lap around the earth.

This was during the time that America was trying and sometimes failing to build a rocket that was successful to fly to the moon. This travel was a competition with the Soviet Union. We later found out that it took another 20 years before a successful flight to the moon. This, unfortunately, included a year and a half wait after Apollo 7 failed its mission and unfortunately set fire, costing the 3 lives of the astronauts. Also in this building, we found out what a hero truly is, which is someone who is Inspired, Passionate, Curious, Tenacious, Disciplined, Confident, Courageous, Principled and Selfless.

Next, we walked to the bus tours area where you take a 25 minute coach ride to the launch pad area, which is where the original space rocket first took off from. We were told that the safest distance away when there is a launch is 3 miles due to if the rocket, unfortunately, has a problem and exploded, it has the same power as an atomic bomb. There were a couple of shows to teach you more about what goes on and how it happens. Here we saw the actual control room where all the workers who made the launch happen used a 3 minute countdown to signal to the astronauts in the rocket about how long they had until take off. When there was 15 seconds left we heard a countdown with various chairs in front of us lighting up showing us where the voice was coming from.

‘All systems go, you are ready for launch’ and the Windows at the back of the theatre began to shake to simulate how it would of been on Apollo 8’s launch day. We went to the gift shop and got some souvenirs before returning to the bus stop to get the bus back to the original site. Once we were back at the original site and off the bus, we walked over to the space shuttle Atlantis building.

In this building, we were taken into a theatre where we watched a clip about how many years ago an idea was brought up about making a space shuttle which was reusable and would ‘fly like a rocket and land like a plane’. Many tests were done and some did fail, eventually it was a success. At the end of the clip the screen cleared and the actual space shuttle came into view. After this the screen went up and you could walk through and see the shuttle itself, an amazing experience.