GREEN DRAGON POINT AND TITUSVILLE-KENNEDY SPACE CENTER

After leaving Vero Beach, where we had a wonderful time, we continued our trek north and stopped at a place known as Green Dragon Point.  It is actually just a few miles north of Melbourne in an area known as Indiatlantic. There used to be a big Green Dragon on the point which is right in the mouth of the Banana River where it meets the Indian River.  I guess it got blown up in a storm and was never repaired, or removed.  Whatever.  This place is perhaps the most cruiser-un-friendly place we have been to.  Nobody will let anchored boaters tie up their dinghies to go into town.  There is a marina right there and they will not allow you to tie up for even an hour to run to the market.  There is a yachtie club right there too with its own marina.  No luck there either.  Sometimes folks are just rude.  The marina was a total shit hole, so you would think that, for a lousy $5.00 they would welcome a visitor, but alas, no, and thus the reason their marina is a shit hole.  The yachtie clubs around here are simply too exclusive to let garbage like us in.  This is quite unlike the yacht club we were members of back in California.  The Channel Islands Yacht Club, as far as I know, has never and would never, turn away a travelling yachtsman, even if the club did have its own marina.  While it has no marina, when I was Commodore there, I would have picked up the phone and called the marina operators and asked if we could accommodate a travelling boater and it would have been taken care of.  Not here in Florida, baby.  The only good thing I have to say about Green Dragon Point was all the dolphins that stayed in the river mouth all day and night.  They would come right up close to the boat. 

This is what remains of the Green Dragon

As you know, we hauled our backsides all the way from Key West, up the West Coast and then across the Okeechobee so we could make it north to Titusville to witness the launch of STS 134 - the Shuttle Endeavor - on its final launch. It was originally scheduled for April 14, but alas, it was cancelled due to some Russian scheduling malfunction.  It has been rescheduled for April 29.  Who knows, maybe it goes.  Perhaps it won't.  Shuttle launch rescheduling is a very common thing.  I would hate to have purchased plane tickets, made hotel reservations, got a rental car, and travelled a long distance only to have the mission scrubbed at the last possible moment due to any one of a thousand possible reasons.  For instance, it is easy to understand that the weather in Cape Canaveral has to be within pretty tight parameters for the shuttle to launch.  But did you know that the weather at approximately 7 other places on the globe must also fall within very tight parameters at the same time?  This is because, if the shuttle had to abort, it has to have a prepared landing site.  So, they cannot launch it if they cannot land it.  Pretty crazy, huh?  Well, one thing is for certain, whether they are at Houston or at Kennedy, the folks who organize and make shuttle missions happen care deeply about the safety and welfare of the astronaut crews and will not take any chances whatsoever. 

So, despite the cancellation of the 4/14 launch, we did go to Titusville, also known as Space City.  It had been nearly 3 weeks since we had been plugged into a marina, so we decided to get a spot in Titusville Municipal Marina.  They had a deal - pay for 2 nights, get the third night free.  So, we figured, what the hell.  Let's just do a couple days in the harbor, visit the Kennedy Space Center, and get a few chores done that really are better handled while plugged in.  I want to complement the marina.  Nice place with nice people.  When we come back around this way someday, we will definitely stop there again.  We might even anchor off the beach as this marina has a beautiful dinghy dock and they only charge $5 per day for cruisers anchored out to use, including trash, showers, all the amenities, etc.
As soon as we got to Titusville, we made arrangements for a rental car through a company called Cheap Rental Car.  Well, I'm not sure it was any cheaper than anyone else, but they were nice enough to come to the marina and pick us up and take us to their offices to complete the paper work.  We rented ourselves a little red Neon.  Cute car.  It's got some guts, and it got us to and from where we wanted to go.

Downtown Titusville pretty much closes up tight on Sunday evening, so there was really not much (say, nothing) going on.  There was a carnival in the park, but we passed in favor of a stroll down old historic Titusville. The downtown area is pretty cool looking with all the old buildings having been refurbished.  There are nice stores and restaurants and everything is full, unlike several other "historic" downtown areas we have visited where many shops and businesses have gone out.

Here is an interesting tidbit.  Titusville got its name as a result of the outcome of a game of dominoes.
Titusville was founded in 1867 when Confederate Col. Henry Theodore Titus stepped ashore on the banks of the Indian River.  However, there was a U. S. Post Office in the area that was established in 1859 in what was then known as Sand Point.  Col. Titus came to Sand Point with the idea of building a town on land owned by his wife Mary overlooking the Indian River where they first stepped ashore.  They built the first hotel and named it "The Titus House". The Colonel and Mary donated land for the first courthouse, four churches, laid out many of the town's streets, and established a link to the outside world by connecting the St. Johns and Indian Rivers with mule-drawn wagons.  Today's "Titusville" might have been known as "Riceville" except for the craftiness of Col. Titus who won a challenge match of dominoes against Capt. Clark Rice to determine which player got to rename the town. Thus the outcome of a domino game resulted in Sand Point becoming Titusville, Florida in 1873.  Kinda silly isn't it.

Again, our sole purpose for coming to Titusville was our desire to visit Kennedy Space Center.  And visit KSC we did.  On Monday morning, we hopped into our little red Neon and drove the 13 miles or so to the KSC.  You recall that we rode our bikes to the Houston Space Center when we were in Clear Lake, Texas.  Well, given that these folks launch some pretty big rockets and risk some really big explosions, it's no wonder that the KSC is well out in the middle of just about nowhere. 

The Vehicle Assembly Building seen from the ICW approximately 12 miles away.

The Vehicle Assembly Building - to give you an idea how big it is, each of the stars on the flag are 6 feet across.

The west side of the VAB - the doors are sectional and take a long time to open.

There is Endeavor off in the distance.

In some cases, KSC was not unlike HSC.  There is a visitors complex with lots of interesting attractions - the future of space exploration, living in space (the ISS), the Shuttle Experience, the Rocket Garden, and beautiful IMAX theaters that literally put you there in space.  What was hugely different, however, was that KSC is where they launch the rockets and shuttles.  There is a lot more really BIG hardware, and not as much control center stuff.  You probably know that shortly after the shuttle or a rocket clears the launch pad, control is given over to the folks in Houston.  So, what we didn't see in Houston were things like the huge crawler that moves rockets and shuttles from the Vehicle Assembly Building out to the pad; the special roadway they had to create to handle the millions of tons of load when moving the crawler with a space ship aboard out to the launch pad; the gantries; the observation houses; the vehicle assembly facilities; as well as the orbiter hangers where they take them apart and study every inch of the vehicles after returning from a mission.

The Rocket Garden at KSC

It's hard to believe that KSC has been the gateway to space exploration for the last 50 years.  It is truly a place where pioneers come and who undertake truly heroic endeavors.  America's space program has provided more good things for our lives than we can probably count; simple things like velcro and dehydrated stuff; medical advancements; but, perhaps most spectacularly, the Hubble Telescope, taken into space aboard a shuttle from KSC, that has been able to allow us to see what the universe looked like nearly 100 billion years ago, long before the formation of our own little corner in space - our solar system.  Staggering, isn't it. 



The mighty Crawlers that haul rockets and the shuttle along with her SRB's and ET to the launch pads.



We learned that it is not uncommon for astronauts to get quite emotional when they see the earth from space for the first time.  Ok, let me try to give you an example of where the Hubble has got us:  we know that there are billions of galaxies that we can see (perhaps billions more that we cannot), and in each of these galaxies, there are billions of stars.  There are billions of new galaxies being formed, each with billions more stars.  So, try an imagine what it must be like if you were looking for life somewhere "out there".  I should think that perhaps the biggest hurdle is trying to figure out where to look first.  It's not like simply looking up or around the 360 degrees of the compass.  I suspect, but cannot be sure, that it is possible, given the billions and billions of chances for there to exist conditions similar to those that make life possible in our solar system somewhere out there.  God only knows.  The conditions conducive to life need not necessarily be conducive to "our life."  Nevertheless, simply by understanding that light travels at 186,000 miles per second, and that, with the help of the Hubble, we can see stars hundreds of millions of miles away, we can only begin to appreciate the aspect of distance. 

The actual Apollo trigger room.

 Again, if light travels at 186,000 miles per second, then just how far would light travel in a minute, an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year, in a million years?  Truly staggering.  So where do we even begin to look while it is still impossible for a manned space craft to leave our solar system, much less travel to the opposite side of our galaxy.  I know I am perhaps waxing poetic over this, but to me, it is the most fascinating topic there is.  It's all there.  There is no wonder in that simple fact.  I'm not even going to go into the question, "why".  Frankly, I am simply overwhelmed by the staggering distances involved.  See what happens when you have the opportunity to visit a place like KSC?  And I get excited if the boat achieves double digits in speed when pushed by a current.  I might actually make 10 miles per hour.

The highlight of the trip to KSC was the bus tour.  Well, at least part of it.  They take you to where they have a Saturn V rocket on display. 

We saw one in Houston.  This one was displayed with quite a bit more flash.  There were more exhibits attached to it, including an opportunity to touch a moon rock.  Well.  You really cannot get used to seeing the Saturn V given that it is the largest rocket ever built and was the rocket they used to send many men to the moon.  It has to be big because it has to be so powerful and carry an awful lot of fuel - enough to push the capsule past the earth's gravitational pull for quite a long way before it can escape earth's gravity and then engage the moon's gravity. 

Let's just say that we have yet to manufacture a bullet that can move faster than the Saturn V.  The manned Apollo missions were each launched aboard a Saturn V launch vehicle. The complete assembly including the Apollo spacecraft and the Saturn launch vehicle stood 363 feet tall and weighed over 6 million pounds.  Ultimately, to get into lunar orbit, the multiple stage engines had to push to speeds in excess of 24,500 mph.  That's definitely cookin' Baby!

Definitely the "business end" of a Saturn V

It's so big, the photographs do not do it justice.  It stands longer than a football field.

 However, for me, the piece de resistance, was the view of Launch Pad 39 where Endeavor was sitting ready to go (except for the fuel). 

From where we were, on top of the obervation gantry, we could see that she was attached to the two solid rocket boosters, and the exernal fuel tank, resting quietly in her position on the launch pad.  There are tall lightning rods around to hopefully fend off an electrical attack.  She sits out there on the pad.  Astronuats say that when they actually take their seats in the shuttle within an hour of the launch, and the external fuel tank is filled with its liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, she creeks and moans, pops and hisses, and has variably been described as a race horse in the shoot before the start of a race.  She has a life and a feeling of just wanting to go like hell.  Literally 31 seconds before launch, all control moves to the shuttle's various onboard systems.  She comes truly alive. 

There are millions of systems working simultaneously, and perfectly, all of which are absolutely necessary to get those millions of tons of hardware up into space.  It may not be a terribly long trip, but it is furious.  Once the solid rocket boosters are lit, they cannot be extinguished.  Crazy!  They powere the shuttle so fast that at a certain point in the launch, they have to trim and apply thrust from the main shuttle engines to slow down less the wings fall off and the shuttle colapse like a beer can under the enormous pressures involved.  But there she was.  You go Endeavor.  We will look for your trail into space on April 29 from somewhere on the St. John River.

Brenda touching a piece of moon rock.

Ultimately, we had a terrific time in Titusville.  I wonder what will happen to the community when the shuttle program concludes?  I understand our president, in his inimitable wisdom, is looking to turn space exploration and travel over to the private sector.  NASA will essentially become a consulting firm and private companies will rent space on the launch pads.  What NASA has done for American spirit and knowhow cannot be replaced by private sector management.  Space exploration for the sake of itself will be replaced by space profit making and the cutting of corners.  I'm not saying that it will ever be safe.  But it would be a lot safer if dollars did not figure into the equation the way they do when private companies do business.  For that matter, who will insure it?  Oh well.  Write to your representatives and let them know what a huge mistake it is to cancel the shuttle program.  I know I will.

This guy showed up when we were washing down the boat for a sip of fresh water.

We left Titusville this morning and rolled up the line to a place most of us have heard of, Daytona Beach.  We got here late so we have not gone into town to do any exploring.  I am not sure if we will, or if we will keep going on up to St. Augustine.  We'll figure that out in the morning.  In the mean time, be well.

Bye