Space Is The Place - page 2

This second page of my Space Is The Place website carries on with descriptions of my visits to various space centres over the years. The third , fourth and fifth pages display some of my models of historic spacecraft and launch vehicles. Click here to return to the home page.

On this second page are descriptions of my visits to the following space centres over the years:

The Kennedy Space Center

(February 1993)

In late February/early March 1993 I spent eight days in Florida visiting and touring buildings at the John F. Kennedy Space Centre, staying with my friend Ron Caswell. This is undoubtedly the most famous spaceport in the world and is named for the American President who set the landing and safe return of a man on the moon within the decade of the 1960s as a national goal in a speech to Congress on May 25th, 1961 (MP3 audio file). In the photo at left I am standing in front of Pad 39B. This is one of two pads (see also thumbnail below of Pad 39A) built back in the 1960's originally for the Saturn V moon rocket, and refurbished to accommodate the Space Shuttle in the late 1970s. Interestingly, the pad that launches the Soviet space shuttle, Energia Buran, has a similar history, having originally been built to launch the long secret Soviet moon rocket, the N-1 (see more on "N-1" Ed Cameron's site).

I was lucky enough to have a friend (the late Butch Head) able to pull strings with NASA officials to get a "Centre Director's Gold Pass" (which is what I am holding up in the photo in front of Pad 39B), which allowed us access (when accompanied by Ron Caswell, an engineer at KSC) inside many of the buildings at KSC, including the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) where Discovery was being refurbished at the time and the Operations and Check-out Building (O&C) - see thumbnail photos below. I am now most thankful that I had the opportunity to tour inside these buildings when I did. In this post-911 world, I am quite sure an "ordinary citizen", not to mention a Canadian citizen, would not be allowed such access.

Pad 39a with Space Shuttle on it (click to enlarge)

Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) with Ken Harman in front (click to enlarge)

Inside the VAB on Floor 16: External Tank and Solid Rocket Boosters await the Orbiter (click to enlarge)

Inside the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) (click to enlarge)

Under nose of Shuttle Discovery being refurbished in OPF (click to enlarge)

Payloads for upcoming flights in the Operations and Check-out Building (O & C) (click to enlarge)

Door Apollo and Shuttle crews come through heading to launch pad, O&C Building (click to enlarge)

Incidentally, I had originally booked my flight to Florida and vacation to see the launch of the Space Shuttle (STS-55). In the event this launch took place two months late (technical glitches, followed by a pad abort). It was almost 13 years before I returned to "the Cape" and finally did see a launch there in January 2006 (though not a Shuttle launch)...more on that below.

Kourou

(November 1993)

In November of 1993 a group of six of us flew to the South American colony of French Guiana (see map for location), which is on the northeast coast of the continent in the Amazon basin, a country cut out of dense jungle, to see the launch of an Ariane rocket. We witnessed the successful launch of Ariane V-61 (an Ariane 44LP rocket) at night, which placed two satellites into orbit.

In the photo at left the six of us are underneath the sign at the entrance to the space centre (left to right: Ken Harman, Ron Caswell, Linda Thomas, Richard Tonkin, Bob McCullough, the late Butch Head). The logo for "ESA", the European Space Agency can be seen on the sign, as well as the logo for "CNES", the French space agency. Kourou is actually the busiest commercial spaceport in the world, launching a large number of telecommunications, weather and imaging satellites. More photos and information on this trip can be found on Ron Caswell's site.

Ariane V-61 launch, November 23, 1993 - official European Space Agency photo (click to enlarge)

Ariane rocket in its assembly building (click to enlarge)

Video of launch of Ariane V-61, November 1993 (courtesy Bob McCullough)

Vandenberg Air Force Base

(July 1996)

In July 1996 I drove down the west coast from my home in Vancouver Canada to tour several space-related facilities in California. One of the highlights of that trip was a visit to America's busiest spaceport, Vandenberg Air Force Base near Lompoc California, just north of Santa Barbara on the coast. This launch site is a military installation from which many spy satellites are placed in a polar orbit. A polar orbit is best for overflying most of the Earth's surface in a relatively short period of time (as the Earth rotates below at 90 degrees to the satellite track), which is important for reconnaissance missions. Once again, I am very glad I took this tour when I did because this facility had never, so far as I am aware, been available for public tours before this time (1996) and now, in this post-911 world, I expect it is closed to the general public once again.

Vandenberg played a hugely important role in the development of spaceflight technology that is rarely recognized. It is the site from which the Corona program satelittes were launched, the first American spy satellites which flew under the cover of the US Airforce's Discoverer scientific satellite program. The first successful return of anything from Earth orbit took place on the test flight Discoverer XIII launched on August 10th, 1960 - an American flag, which was subsequently presented to President Eisenhower.

Startng on the next mission, Discoverer XIV launched on August 18th 1960, the Corona program began to live up to its potential, returning hundreds of photos of the Soviet Union - more photos than had all 24 U-2 missions over the USSR to that point combined. This one mission revealed 64 previously unknown Soviet airfields and 26 new surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites. Of course, none of this was known at the time and did not become public until the Corona Program was declassified by Executive Order of President Bill Clinton in February 1995.

From the perspective of the intelligence community and the White House, the success of the Corona mission 9009 (i.e., Discover XIV) could not have come at a better time, coming as it did only three and a half months after U-2 flights over the Soviet Union had effectively been shut down following the shooting down of Francis Gary Power's U-2 over the USSR on May 1st, 1960.

The first three photos below are of the infamous "Space Launch Complex 6" (SLC 6), popularly known as "Slick 6". This complex was re-configured in the early 1980s into a pad to launch the Space Shuttle into polar orbits on covert military missions. However, in the aftermath of the Challenger accident, in the late 1980s this plan was abandon in the interests of safety and the Air Force's decision to use large expendable boosters to launch their spy satellites. This was the second time this complex had been "mothballed" as it was originally built in the mid-1960s to launch the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) on top of the huge Titan IIIM rocket. The MOL program was to be the USAF's manned military space program, but it never flew a mission before it was cancelled in 1969. Slick 6 was infamous because by the late 1990s many billions of dollars had been invested in the facility without it ever successfully launching a single space mission (this is no longer the case, since in the last few years it has launched small commercial rockets on space missions).

The building in the photos below with the flag and "USAF" painted on its side is mobile! - the pad where the Shuttle was to sit is stationary, and the protective building moves towards it down a track to encompass it. It is difficult to judge the size of this building, but in the top photo if you look closely to the right of the building you will see a panel truck. Note that it is less than half the size of any one of the letters in the "USAF" painted on the side of the building.

Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC6) 'Slick 6' (click to enlarge) - note panel truck to the right of the building to judge scale

Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC6) 'Slick 6' (click to enlarge)

Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC6) 'Slick 6' (click to enlarge) - note the ever present fog

Atlas pad at Vandenberg (click to enlarge) - note the ever present fog

The Kennedy Space Center

(January 2006)

A number of the guys who first met on the trip to Russia in 1992, the so called "Baikonour Boys" arranged to meet at "the Cape" in January of 2006 for a reunion and to see the New Horizons (link to NASA website) spacecraft launched to Pluto. (for an MP3 audio interview about the New Horizons mission from January 2006 click here This was just five months after our dear friend and fellow "Baikonour Boy" Butch Head met an untimely death in an auto accident and Butch was truly there in spirit throughout our time together. In fact, the Atlas V 500 with the New Horizon's spacecraft was supposed to be launched on January 17th but was scrubbed that day and the next and finally launched on January 19th. As Bob McCullough noted, it was Butch's way of keeping us together a bit longer.

We watched the launch (video file) from the deck of Ron Caswell's condo, situated directly across the Indian River from the launch site. I took these photos of the launch from Ron's deck.

Video of launch of New Horizons, January 19, 2006 (courtesy Bob McCullough)

Ron, who has seen literally hundreds of launches, noted that he had never seen a rocket jump off the pad as quickly as the New Horizons Atlas V, and as indicated in the above audio file, New Horizons will be the fastest travelling spacecraft ever.

Later in the year I built a model of the New Horizon's Atlas V launch vehicle (click on thumnails to enlarge):

Click here to continue on to the third page which displays a number of my models of spacecraft and launch vehicles and outlines some of the history behind them. This continues on the fourth and fifth pages as well. Click here should you to return to the home page.

This page will change and evolve over time, so check back periodically. I welcome any questions or comments and can be contacted at: