Crew-12 and KSC

Today I fulfilled a childhood dream, I got to see a rocket launch in person and go to Kennedy Space Centre.

Woke up at 4am and drove an hour from my hotel over to Port Canaveral and saw Crew-12 lift off, the sound was unlike anything I’ve ever heard. I couldn’t stop smiling when I saw the gas halo when the stages separated.

Didn’t get to see Core B1101 (the Falcon 9 booster) return for landing though as a Disney cruise ship chose that exact moment to enter port and block the view across the water.

After that I drove back and slept for a few more hours before my co-worker drove us to Kennedy Space Centre. There we saw the rocket garden, walked around the gateway exhibit, went to the Saturn V visitor centre and got some photos of Artemis II on the stand at LZ-39A. The scale of the Vehicle Assembly Building is almost to much to hold in your head, one metric quoted on the video on the bus was that the building could hold 250 Billion ping pong balls.

I was originally still going to be in Orlando for the launch of Artemis-II but they have pushed it back to March 3rd which is just after I leave. While that is unfortunate I’m glad I got the chance to see at least one launch with humans aboard.