The space launch

Today we went to the space coast to visit the Kennedy Space Museum. We were supposed to be going somewhere else but Mummy saw on the news that they had just decided to launch a real rocket into space tonight and we wanted to see it.

First we had a look at the nature and technology. We liked looking at the animals and reading about what experiments they did in space helped nature on earth. We walked around lots of rockets 🚀 and got to sit in 3 of them. They were really big. On one of them we got to lie down with our feet up like you were sitting on a chair lying down.

There was a bus tour so we got on a bus. The bus took us all around the real NASA area. We saw the building where they build the rockets. It was huge and the blue bit of the flag on the side is the size of a basketball court. You can drive a double decker bus down one of the red stripes in the flag! The guide told us the Coluseum in Rome would fit on the roof with room for a car park too.

We saw the launch pads and where the rocket was going to go from. We got off the bus and there was loads more to do. We went into a big hanger where there were more rockets, real space suits and lots to learn about space.

There was a bit of rock from the moon that you could touch so I felt it. It felt soft. We went in to watch a film and it was over the real control centre they used to launch the Apollo rockets to the moon. When the rocket blasted off the roof was shaking and it felt like it was really happening.

We went to watch another film about the space shuttle Atlantis. At the end the screen lifted up and the real Atlantis was there in real life. I went like this 🙀🙊 I can’t believe it. This part was really fun, we climbed through a tunnel to see what it would be like crawling through a space ship and went down a slide like what they use to come out of their space ship. Me and Dad went in a simulator but Eliza was too short. It was like being launched in a real rocket and was really epic.

The Kennedy space centre is amazing and you should definitely go if you ever get a chance. We then had to go and get ready for the launch as time was running about. There is a launch window when they can launch the rocket and it opened at 8:45pm. We tried to get tickets to watch it here but they had all sold out so we went to the beach to watch it instead.

The rocket was about to launch and there were lots of people with us on the beach to watch it.  We didn’t wait long then it started and the whole sky lit up and we could see the smoke. It looked like a white shooting star from my camera but on mums camera it looked like the sun or a ball of fire. It was very noisy. We watched it getting higher and higher. We could see the tail on it and it was getting smaller and smaller then it disappeared and came back again. This is because it has 2 lots of fuel. When it disappeared the first fuel had run out and that part of the rocket drops off then the second fuel starts and takes the rocket further. It just looked like a star in the sky now then it disappeared for good and Dad said it would be over England soon. The rocket was called Falcon 9 and it had 3 things to deliver on board.

NASA and SpaceX have an amazing video about the launch where there are cameras on the ground much closer than we were and they even have a camera on the rocket! You can watch it here.

We’ve made a video of our day and the launch. We hope you like it!