Friday, April 3, 2009

Tuesday: Space Camp

We had decided to go to the Space museum on Tuesday as the weather looked bad. We were right, it was cold damp and drizzly. We had a great time going round the museum . One section of the museum is set aside for the famous ‘Space Camp’, where they filmed the film ‘Space Camp’ (though they made it look like Cape Canaveral). There was lots of interesting space junk, including a complete Saturn V. There is now a lot more information about the new Ares rocket, the successor to the Shuttle. It looks like it will be big and the first part of the programme will be launched this summer. Why a space museum in Huntsville? Because Huntsville is the place where Werner Von Braun was located back in 1950 with the supply of V2 rockets he brought with him. They took over a disued chemical warfare facility. This grew into the Redstone Army Rocket Range, which then became home to NASA as the Marshall Space Center. It is really the centre for development of rocket engines, rockets, satellites and manned vehicles, including the lunar landers.

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