A shuttle launch is best seen as a culminating activity. It’s worth a pre-game, if you will, visit to the Kennedy Space Center. Especially worthwhile:
*The Shuttle Launch Experience. Sights, sounds, gut-feelings of a vertical launch. But more interesting than exciting. Don’t think Disney or Busch Gardens. But do think frame of reference that’s available nowhere else.
*Apollo/Saturn V Center. Plenty of photo ops, including a 363-foot moon rocket. The Firing Room Theater re-creates an Apollo launch and the Lunar Theater depicts the first moon landing. The video is moving – on several levels.
Includes vintage footage of President John F. Kennedy delivering a space-program stump speech at Rice University in 1962. Kennedy was on his game as he addressed the skeptics who had questioned the value of a space program. He made the case for man’s eternal quest to forge new frontiers. He spoke of “why” we climb the highest mountains; “why” someone would fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean; and “why Rice plays Texas every year.”
*Bonus: The Kennedy Space Center is in the heart of the 140,000-acre Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. We’re talking bald eagles (in the winter), manatees, alligators and some 340 species of birds.
*Bonus: Pet kennels are available free of charge at KSC. They’re clean and functional. The attendants are conscience-easing friendly.