| It was a night-time launch.It really is a long way away, and my puny lens (a Canon EF20-35) had trouble. |
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| It was some sort of secret military mission: Tracking and Data Relay Satellite-J. Whatever that means. The launch vehicle was a Lockheed Martin Atlas IIA rocket. There are some nice pictures of this rocket on a Lockheed Martin site. |
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| The next day a visit to the Kennedy Space Center visiters center provided a closer view of some of the facilities. |
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| They had the original Mercury firing room. |
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| And one of the original Mercury reentry vehicles. |
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They don't come any sexier than this Russian Soyez orbiter. |
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| The original Apollo firing room. |
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| It's hard to convey how big these giants really are. The shuttle launch vehicle is about half the length of this Saturn V. |
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| Imagine tooling around the moon in one of these! This was 1971! |
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Inside an Apollo orbiter. |
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| They had a full-size shuttle you can play around in. |
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Here's a close-up of those infamous tiles.They use facsimiles of the tiles here. They're too expensive for the tourists.Yes, that's a plant growing out of the bottom. |
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| The rocket garden at dusk. |
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And a 'gator' in the mote. |
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