Liberty Star, SRB & the VAB

We had "fun" chasing Liberty Star and the SRB it carried through Port Canaveral. We spent more than 2 hours at Canaveral Lock waiting for it before we were told that it would not come through on Sunday afterall, so we went to the Cape Canaveral Air Force Museum to see the Dragon Spacecraft only to find out after our visit to the museum that it in fact was "in the lock now!" So we missed the lock passage and dashed around to A1A where I got this picture of it in the distance with the VAB in the background.

VAB the night before STS-135 launch

The VAB stands silently by while Atlantis hogs all the attention the night before the launch of STS-135 and the final shuttle flight. This immense building is where two generations of NASA spacecraft, the Apollo-Saturn rockets and Space Shuttles have been assembled before being transported out to Launch Complex 39 and sent off on their missions. It stands empty now with no manned launches from Kennedy Space Center in the near future. The tall tower at left is a relic of the recently canceled Constellation program and was built to launch the Ares I rockets with Orion capsules on them at a cost of about $390 million. This image was taken with my 75-300mm lens at f/5.6, ISO 100 and 30 seconds.

The VAB up close

During the KSC tour, we stopped next to the VAB - actually at the site where the Saturn V rocket used to be displayed before it was moved to the Saturn V center not too far down the road. This image is slightly cropped from the original that was shot with the kit lens at 28mm focal length with an exposure of 1/200 seconds at f/8, ISO 400.

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.