Kennedy Space Center - Your Guide to the Kennedy Space Center
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Your ticket entitles you to a day at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex which includes the KSC Tour of NASA’s Launch Headquarters, both IMAX films, all shows and exhibits and a visit to the Astronaut Hall of Fame. The tour includes stops at the four story LC-39 observation gantry where guests get a bird’s eye view of the space shuttle launch pads and parts of the world’s busiest space launch facility.
The second tour stop is the acclaimed Apollo/Saturn V Center, where guests walk beneath a massive Saturn V rocket, relive Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon and experience the thunderous rumble of a Saturn V moon rocket lift off. Later, guests can take a trip to the International Space Station Center where they will see real parts of the space station being readied for Launch!
The day continues with IMAX® movie screenings of the new “Magnificent Desolation” where they explore the moon in full 3-D, and “Space Station 3-D,” which takes them on a virtual trip to the International Space Station in a fully immersive big-screen environment.
Guests also enjoy the many other shows and exhibits at the Visitor Complex including a chance to meet a real astronaut at the Astronaut Encounter Show and enjoy the zany live-action show “Mad Mission to Mars 2025.” |
The day is topped off with a visit to the Astronaut Hall of Fame, located at the entrance to Kennedy Space Center and a short 5-minute drive from the Visitor Complex. This attraction features the world’s largest collection of personal astronaut mementos, plus historic spacecraft, one-of-a-kind space legacies and hands on activities. Guests can sit in a mission control console, take a virtual moonwalk, feel the pull of 4 Gs in the G-Force Simulator and land the Space Shuttle.
Opened in May of 2007 and included with Admission is the new Shuttle Launch Experience. Shuttle Launch Experience replicates the sights, sounds and feelings of a shuttle launch, an incredible journey of launching into space and orbiting Earth aboard a Space Shuttle. Guest crew members strap in and go vertical for launch in a one-of-a-kind motion-based simulator, the only realistic simulation of a launch ever created. The five-minute experience sequence culminates with a breath-taking view of Earth from space.
The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, operated by Delaware North Companies at no taxpayer expense, is home to a number of museums, two IMAX theatres, and various bus tours allowing visitors a closer look at various restricted areas that would otherwise not be possible. Included with your ticket from Computicket.co.uk is tour-bus transportation into the restricted area to an observation gantry on the grounds of Launch Complex 39, and to the Apollo-Saturn V Center.
The observation gantry provides unobstructed views of both launch pads and all of Kennedy Space Center property. The Apollo-Saturn V Center is a large museum built around its centerpiece exhibit, a restored Saturn V launch vehicle, and features other space related exhibits, including an Apollo capsule. Two theaters allow the visitor to relive parts of the Apollo program. One simulates the environment inside an Apollo-era firing room during an Apollo launch, and another simulates the Apollo 11 landing. The tour also includes a visit to a building where modules for the International Space Station are tested.
The Visitor Complex also includes two facilities run by the Astronauts Memorial Foundation. The most visible of these is the Space Mirror Memorial, also known as the Astronaut Memorial, a huge black granite mirror through-engraved with the names of all astronauts who died in the line of duty. |
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Several articles of flight-used and flight-ready spacecraft are on display at Kennedy Space Center:
Gemini 9A capsule, at the Visitor Complex
Apollo/Skylab Rescue mission Command Module, at the Visitor Complex
LM-9, an Apollo Lunar Module meant for a canceled Apollo mission, Saturn V Center
The Skylab Rescue Command Module and LM-9 are among the few unused flight-ready articles currently in existence and on display. Skylab Rescue was on standby during the Skylab 3 and Skylab 4 missions in the event a rescue mission was necessary, and was actually rolled out to LC-39B during Skylab 3 when the mission's Command Module developed problems that were later fixed. LM-9 was originally meant for Apollo 15, but the mission type was changed, and it was replaced with a more advanced one that carried a lunar rover.
In addition, Mercury-Atlas 8 capsule Sigma 7 and Apollo 14 Command Module Kitty Hawk are located at the nearby Astronaut Hall of Fame. |
