KENNEDY SPACE CENTER–You can’t miss this place on the way here: The Vehicle Assembly Building rises bold and stark, 525 feet high and unmistakable from miles away.
The VAB looks even bigger up close, and still more so from the inside. Seeing the building in which every Saturn V and space shuttle has been stacked before rolling to the pad on a crawler-transporter had to top this part of the Tweetup. Have a look at the pictures below for that and other sights from day one.
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- Entrance sign
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- Tweetup badges
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- The Vehicle Assembly Building
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- The countdown clock
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- Endeavour at the pad
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- Looking down the VAB
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- Columbia remembered
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- Caution sign
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- Boosters and external tank
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- Flag
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- The Shuttle Landing Facility
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- Apollo 8 reenactment
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- Saturn V engines
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- Birds want to fly.
As originally planned, the tour would have concluded in the evening with a stop by the pad to see Endeavour up close as the Rotating Service Structure around it was retracted. But the skies opened up with rain (not a huge problem for the orbiter) and lit up with lightning (a problem), and things didn’t clear up until too late. I’ll trade that experience for a launch as planned Friday afternoon.
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