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<\/a><\/p>\nHere’s a picture of the launch pad showing the tracks where the rocket is brought to the launch pad by a ‘crawler’.\u00a0 The tracks are dug down 7-8 feet and filled with concrete, sand and then topped with Alabama river rock.\u00a0 The Alabama river rock is important because it does not spark.\u00a0 A spark under a rocket filled to capacity with high explosives would be bad!<\/p>\n
Here are a couple pictures of the launch pad.\u00a0 Notice that there appears to be a section that is anchored at the base, and then there’s a section on the left that isn’t anchored.\u00a0 When the shuttle and the rocket that it’s attached to are put into place, that left section closes around it to provide stability while it’s standing there and as it starts to launch.\u00a0 Also notice near the center of the photo there’s a small white box.\u00a0 That box is where the astronauts walk through to get to the shuttle.\u00a0 That little box holds all the astronauts plus several people that help them get ready to board.<\/p>\n Here’s another picture of the launch pad:<\/p>\n And, we were then taken to the back side of the launch pad where we could see underneath the pad.\u00a0 When the rocket launches, I’m sure you’ve seen video of the flames and white smoke along with the shaking and tremendous noise of the rocket firing.\u00a0 The white smoke is actually steam from the sound-suppression system which pumps hundreds of gallons of water into the flames.\u00a0 If not for the sound-suppression system every animal and human standing within a mile of the launch would be killed by the soundwave!\u00a0 The flames and water are channeled through the bottom of the pad where we were standing to take the picture, and channeled to holding tanks.\u00a0\u00a0 We could see how scorched the area was from the flames from so many rockets that were launched on Launch Pad 39A.<\/p>\n Next we’re going to tour the Vehicle Assembly Building.\u00a0 This tour will stop at the end of the year (tomorrow!) because they’ll be starting the remodel of the building for the next type of rockets that will be launched.\u00a0 The shuttle program has ended, but not the space program!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When we visited the NASA Kennedy Space Center visitor center we learned that they were offering some “Up Close” tours that are usually not offered.\u00a0 Jeff is very interested in rockets and NASA so we chose to take two tours.\u00a0 The first tour we took was of Launch Pad 39A.\u00a0 Except for Apollo 1 (which … Continue reading Up Close and Personal – we took an “Up Close” tour of the NASA Launch Pad where every moon flight and shuttle flight took off<\/span> <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n