The VAB

The Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center is visible from all over the area. This is the view from one of NASAs public viewing sites for shuttle launches. This image was taken with the kit lens on my 20D with an exposure of 1/320 seconds at f/5.6, ISO 100 with a focal length of 55 mm.

ATHLETE

The ATHLETE (All Terain Hex-Legged Extra Terrestrial Explorer) makes use of both legs and wheels to move equipment around in simulated lunar exploration. Something like it will quite likely be used in future exploration on other worlds. This image was taken with my 10mm fisheye with an exposure of 1/50 seconds at f/2.8, ISO 400.

LER visits Shorty Crater

A replica of the Lunar Electric Rover (LER) is at the KSC visitors center. In this case, the LER appears to be climbing out of a crater in the Taurus-Littrow Valley called "Shorty" at which Jack Schmitt, the first professional Geologist to explore the Moon in December 1972 found orange colored soil. Obviously, the museum chose a picture from the Apollo 17 mission as a backdrop. The LER is a test vehicle that is being used by the Desert RATs program which is helping to both practice for future lunar exploration and test procedures and hardware. This image was taken with my 10mm fisheye lens with an exposure of 1/50 seconds at f/2.8, ISO 400.

Mercury Launch Control

The original Mercury Control center was recently demolished as it was deteriorating with age. NASA has a good sense of history and recreated the facility at the KSC visitors center (the old MCC was only shown to visitors on a bus tour which took visitors through the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station). The consoles and displays look primitive even compared with the later Apollo facilities, but they got the Mercury spacecraft into space and back home successfully 6 times. This image was taken with my 10mm fisheye lens with an exposure of 1/5 seconds at f/2.8, ISO 400.

Goddard's rocket

After looking at the rockets that helped take us to the Moon in the 1960s, it's interesting to pause and reflect on the beginnings of modern rocketry. This is a replica of one of Dr. Robert Goddard's early liquid fueled rockets which is on display at the Kennedy Space Center. This image was taken with my fisheye lens on my 20D with an exposure of 1/30 seconds at f/2.8, ISO 400.

Fisheye Mercury Redstone

Exercising my first rule of fisheye photography: "If you think you're close enough, take a step closer", here is a shot of the Mercury Redstone rocket in the KSC rocket garden. This image was taken with my 10mm fisheye lens on my 20D with an exposure of 1/250 seconds at f/11, ISO 100.

Saturn IB

The "jewel" of the KSC rocket garden has to be this Saturn IB rocket. But other than taking long shots from across the area of this rocket, it is hard to get a good image of it without other exhibits in front of it. So I tried using my 10mm fisheye lens. Well, it's different. This is a spare Saturn Rocket numbered SA-209 - it is the 9th Saturn IB rocket built and became a museum piece after the last of the Apollo flights (the 3 manned Skylab Saturn IB flights and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project that also used a Saturn IB rocket). This image was taken at f/11 with an exposure of 1/160 seconds, ISO 100.

The Mighty F-1

I wish I'd taken a shot with a human beside this monster rocket engine for scale! This is the Mighty F-1 engine which powered the first stage of the Saturn V rocket. 5 of them were clustered together to provide over 7.5 million pounds of thrust. This engine was the largest liquid rocket engine ever built. You can see some closeups of another F-1 engine that is on display at the New Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamagordo N.M. here. This image was taken with the kit lens on my Canon 20D at 21mm focal length with an exposure of 1/320 seconds at f/6.3, ISO 100.

KSC Rocket Garden

Here's the the first of a few pix from our visit to the Kennedy Space Center last month. This group of rockets is next to the main visitors center at KSC and is very similar to what I remember it looking like when I saw it when I was much younger. From the left is a Mercury-Atlas, an Atlas Agena, a Mercury Redstone, a Thor, a Juno and a Jupiter dressed up like the rocket which launched the United States first satellite, Explorer I. On the far right is an F-1 Engine that powered the first stage of the Saturn V (with 5 of them) and the tail of a Saturn IB rocket (which I'll show better in a bit). This image was taken with the kit lens on my 20D with an exposure of 1/250 seconds at f/5.6, ISO 100.