I took a break from terrorising the Floridan highways and booked me and First-Born on a trip to Cape Canaveral/Kennedy Space Centre. Those who know me know that I'm a geek for this kind of thing and after 5 days of The House Of Mouse, I figured I'd earned a treat. First-Born brought along a ruck-sack stuffed full of books.
I should have driven. The tour company, an outfit called Gator Tours, rolled up in perhaps the rattiest bus I'd ever been in since I lived in Scotland. Seats were torn, a strong smell of diesel exhaust pervaded the interior and the whole thing felt... grubby.
My suspicions concerning the condition of the bus were confirmed after it dropped us back at the hotel in the evening and shed a hubcap as it rumbled away, only one tail-light glowing balefully in the darkness.
Shame there weren't showers at KSC. An hour in that vehicle, and I wanted a full body scrub.
I'd not been to the space centre for 15 years. The last time I went, the huge Saturn V moon rocket was outside, looking faintly sorry for itself. Now it was inside and scrubbed clean. However, the loss of the patina made it look brand new and somehow... fake.
Ex-astronaut Bill Pogue was present to answer questions, gritting his teeth as someone asked the immortal "How do you go to the bathroom in space?" question. I wanted to ask what mission control really said when his Skylab crew, the one that went on strike for a day, came back to earth. I didn't, firstly to avoid embarrassing an old man and secondly so First-Born wouldn't have the shame of the whole world knowing what a geek her father is.
I took a tour and listened to the desperately upbeat presentations on the shuttle and ISS programs (my translation: there's a good chance the shuttle won't fly again with funds diverted to pay for the doomed 'Dubya In Space' initiative and the flawed ISS will have to be abandoned without the shuttle to fly the bigger spare parts.)
I looked at the prone Saturn V rocket and the two spare lunar modules (one of which forms part of a show and another hangs from the ceiling like a hunter's trophy) and wondered at the mindset that would expend all the effort to go the mile to build these things and then not go the extra inch to fly them.
Yes, you could say that KSC made me sad. I strongly doubt the US will be in the manned spaceflight business in 10 years time...
