Current location:	Cape Canaveral, FL
Current mood:	thankful
Current music:	Alan Parsons Project
Entry tags:	nasa tour, shuttle discovery

Astro-Knot
I've always wanted to be an astronaut, since the Mercury program. I gave up my dream in the last 60's when I learned that I had severe Myopia (-4 to -5 diopters), and therefore neither the Air Force nor the Navy would want me as a pilot.

After watching the launch of Shuttle Endeavour yesterday, I put my family on an airplane back to Pittsburgh, and stayed in Florida for a behind the scenes tour of the Kennedy Space Center. A friend of mine works there, and was able to wrangle an invitation for me to give a talk at the Space Center in return for an inside tour of several parts of the launch complex.

Since the real astronauts are all busy in outer space, they let me use one of their parking spots:


After a tour of the Vehicle Assembly Building, I got to see the Shuttle Discovery in the Orbiter Processing Facility, being readied for its launch on May 24th. NASA uses highly certified riggers to rig access scaffolding around the shuttle, and here's a photo of an "astro-knot":





Here's a wider shot showing the plank (the other end is held by a C-clamp); that's the shuttle's nose below the plank:


Here's a shot of me with the orbiter behind and above me. I'm right under the nose:


After the OPF, and after lunch, I got to visit pad 39B, the northernmost of the two shuttle launching pads:


But they didn't make me stay back...in fact I got to take the elevator all the way to the top of the launch pad and take hundreds of photos. Here's a picture of me with the Vehicle Assembly Building visible behind and below me, about 3 miles away:



All-in-all it was a fantasy come true, and I will be grinning ear-to-ear for several more days just thinking about it.

--Mick