Orlando - so much to do, so little time

We arrived in Orlando on Thursday evening and drove straight to our timeshare and settled in for the evening.  The view from our balcony was fantastic.

The view of the pool area from our balcony.

Friday morning we got up and witnessed the lifeguards ushering out some unwanted guests from the pool area.

They had to leave because they didn’t go to the timeshare presentation!

Saturday we got up early.  We had big plans and reservations to attend the induction of two astronauts into the Astronaut Hall of Fame at Kennedy Space Center.  The drive over was 42 miles, took an hour and fifteen minutes and cost $3.25 in tolls (Florida doesn’t have FREEways). 

    

The first time we visited Kennedy Space Center (13 years ago) the whole tour took about two hours.  Now they have so much to see and do you will be lucky to get it all in in one day.

The first thing they had scheduled for us was a talk given by Astronaut Bob Crippen.  He piloted the first Space Shuttle in 1981.  The talk was very interesting and informative.

 

Next we were scheduled to have lunch with several of the astronauts.  It turned out that we had lunch then the Astronauts came out to a stage and talked about their experience of flying in space and landing on the moon. After their talk they opened it up to the floor for questions.  One good question was how much were they paid as an astronaut.  Since they were all military they just received their regular military pay.  One of the astronauts (Charles Duke) said he made $13.75 in per diem for going to the moon, after the Government subtracted for food, lodging and transportation!

 

(L to R) Walt Cunningham, Apollo 7, Richard Gordon, Apollo 12, Fred Haise, the infamous Apollo 13 (Houston we have a problem), Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14, Al Worden, Apollo 15, and Charles Duke, Apollo 16.

This was a lucky day.  It just so happened that a military Atlas 5 rocket was scheduled to blast off at 2:17 PM and we got to see it and hear the might roar from the blastoff.

If you look above the white spec in the sky you can see the rocket.

The last thing scheduled for the day was the induction of Karol “Bo” Bobko and Susan Helms into the Astronaut Hall of Fame.

         

Previous inductees and photos of the two new inductees                     Karol Bobko acceptance speech

Susan Helms accepting her induction medal

There was so much to see and do we didn’t get to do it all.  After listening to the astronauts and seeing the induction it really made us feel proud to be from the USA!