Moonraker

 

On May 31st we went to Kennedy Space Centre to watch the Space Shuttle Discovery launch. I bought the tickets on the internet months ago and the tickets to see the launch as close up as you can had already gone when I logged on 30 minutes after they went on sale.

The day was not without its issues. It was a long drive there and it took twice as long to get home. The world and his wife was over there watching it take off it appeared. Also it was hot. Now I do hate people that go on holiday and then moan about all the good weather but.... I had kind of imagined that it would be a fairly indoor, museum-ish place - and it wasn't. However, a pink Space Princess baseball cap and tee-shirt for the girl who already knows-what-she-wants-and-how-to-get-it eased our worries on that score.

Then there was the simulator. The best bit of the space centre was this launch simulator experience and you had to be 48 inches high to get in. Roll up the concerned (idiotic) mother with middle child to check his height before taking him on. Match her with the fed up short guy in a uniform who decided that the cute little blond guy couldn't go on even though he was definitely 48inches high (if you include his hair). Enter the unfeeling father who announced that of course I should have just breezed on without bothering to measure the by now sobbing, heart-broken urchin in question.

And as usual, he was right. We waited until the short guy was replaced by the small jolly lady and sailed through without remark. But that wasn't all. As we stood inside the building poised to enter our shuttle simulator Max and two girls with similar height issues were pulled from the line to be measured again. Thankfully though, jolly young girl in uniform gave the boy a high five and we were in business. The simulator ride, after all that, was rubblish. No - only joking!

That was followed by a really impressive 3D film about the Space Station I didn't know existed and the launch itself. It is a quite amazing thing to see and I hope the photos give some impression. I don't suppose it registered much with the alligators. The one we saw wasn't even bothered about having this thing (dragonfly?) perched on its nose all afternoon but all the humans seemed pretty impressed.