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| At the entrance |
We traveled by car today to visit the Space & Rocket
Center at Huntsville. In 1950, Wernher von Braun and his team of 126 German Rocketeers,
American Rocketeers, support people and contractors now numbering 900 moved to
the 40,000 acre Huntsville Redstone Arsenal creating the Army Ballistic Missile
Agency. Von Braun was not only a great scientist but also a dynamic leader. We
were tutored by a guide that worked with von Braun in the 60’s and spoke with
many of the astronauts in the space program. I learned many interesting
engineering obstacles that were resolved by the program. We saw
an actual Saturn V rocket like that used to send man to the moon and are amazed
at the size of the rocket. Much information was presented about how it was
designed, the fuels used for the various stages, equipment construction to
contain the 5,000 degree exhaust from the rocket engines. We also viewed a great
IMAX movie about the various Apollo moon landing missions with actual excerpts
of our time on the moon, I was pleased to relearn that 12 men walked on the moon
in 6 different Apollo missions. We could have spent days at the museum but only
had a few hours, very enjoyable side trip that I would recommend to everyone that visit northern Alabama.
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| Rockets on Display |
More boats departed today and about 15 boats remain, I
expect most of us will leave tomorrow. The boats departing today were delayed for
three hours by several tows that were locking through before them.
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| Saturn V Moon Rocket |
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