Day 27, October 19, 2023
Today was travel day for Katherine and I, so it was a really early start as we needed to be at the airport at 7:30. The weird thing about Grand Rapids is that the sun does not get up until after 8am where we are used to the sun getting up at 6:45-7am, so we left the house in the dark! Our first flight took us from Grand Rapids, Michigan to Chicago, Illinois. We had a 3 hour layover which was a very good thing as we had to walk a long way through multiple terminals from Terminal B to terminal F to get to our next flight. Our next flight is to Huntsville Alabama to visit the US Space and Rocket Center. Hunstville is where US rocketry was developed into the space program. We could see the rocket park from the plane because they have a replica of a Saturn V standing up.
Day 28, October 20, 2023
Today was incredible! We went to visit the US Space and Rocket Centre in Huntsville. They have two exhibition buildings, the first building has both historic exhibits as well as full size mock ups of the International Space Station that is used for Space Camp. The second building has the showstopping artefacts including a moon rock, the Apollo 16 Command Module, the largest surviving piece of Skylab that actually fell on Australia, and a real Saturn V rocket lying down on it’s side!
Walking up to the rocket centre- Saturn 1 and Saturn V can be seen above the buildings
While visiting the Saturn V Hall, we met two rocket scientists who worked on the actual Saturn V- Jay Foster and Luke Talley. Jay worked with Dr Werner Von Braun coordinating supplies and logistics for the whole Saturn development team, and Luke worked on the Instrument Unit of every Saturn V rocket. Listen to Luke explain how the Saturn V worked
Luke gave Katherine some booklet resources about the Saturn V that she will be bringing back to her school.
Georgina Monster