Mel
Mining O2 on the Moon

I was lucky enough to come on this trip for the second time with my teacher Mr. Weiner and was also lucky enough to again come and visit the Kennedy Space Center.

Our first stop of the day was at the VAB or vehicle assembly building. From the VAB you can see the shuttleÕs launch pad called 39A. You can see it even though these two points are over 3 miles apart. This lets you know how big they both are. It was a very foggy day but you could still see the launch pad clearly in the distance.

Then we saw the shuttleÕs crawler. We saw this big machine that moves the shuttle with its solid rocket boosters and its external tank from the VAB to the launch pad. The crawler is so big that each of its treads weighs 2,000 pounds. The VAB is able to house two completely assembled shuttles and the crawlers and their launch platforms. Here is a picture of the shuttleÕs launch platform. It sits on top of the crawler and is left with the shuttle on it at the launch pad. You can also see the crawler behind the launch platform. Think how big the VAB must be if two of these can go in and out of doors with a complete shuttle on it. The VAB is in fact the second largest building by volume in the world. The largest building is the Boeing Airplane plant is Washington. We went to the Saturn V complex where se saw a reenactment of the final minutes of the launch of Apollo 8. This was the first flight to the moon. We did not land we orbited took some pictures and came home. I learned that we could stay on the moon for a long time by mining the soil that contains 40% oxygen. It seems weird that we could filter this out store it and use it to breathe. Next we went to see an IMAX movie called, "The Dream is Alive" The movie included some very cool photography of space walk including the first woman (Katharine Sullivan) to perform an EVA (extra vehicular activity) or s space walk. The whole time I was watching the IMAX movie all I could think of was that I could be up there someday, that could be me. After the movie we went to a talk given by astronaut Rick Searfoss. I was able to ask him how it felt to be in space during a program that I worked on at my school called EarthKam. It was cool to ask him about a program that we both worked on. He told us about how each step of effort led to his opportunities. I know that this is my dream to journey into space as an astronaut. I had a great day at the Kennedy Space Center and can hardly wait for my next chance to go back there.