Friday, July 27

Sunset over Wheeler Lake - Tennessee River

Sunset over Ditto Landing Marina

Lunar Excursion Module

Rocket Park -U.S. Space & Rocket Center

The most popular tourist attraction in Huntsville, AL. is the U.S. Space & Rocket Center.  It's the world's largest space museum and has the nation's largest and finest collection of NASA rockets and army missiles.  It is here that a team of scientists, led by Dr. Wernher von Braun, designed and tested the rockets that eventually put man on the moon.
In 1958 they successfully launched a four-stage Jupiter-C rocket carrying Explorer 1, the nation's first earth orbiting satellite.  The U.S. had officially entered the space age.  In 1961, a Mercury-Redstone rocket lifted Alan B. Shepard, America's first astronaut, on a suborbital flight.  Next came the Saturn V rocket that was used in the Apollo missions, the most famous of which resulted in Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon on July 20, 1969.  These successes were followed by several important space projects including Skylab and the shuttles.
What made the visit so fascinating was to visually see the evolution of these rockets and missiles from the German V-2 in WW II to the present.  Looking at what was achieved with the relatively small amount of money spent during the 1950s on space technology, makes one wonder how we could find our country in today's current situation of outsourcing astronaut transport to the Russians.....
Next to us at the Ditto Landing Marina were Hank & Ann Evans, who have been cruising full time on a 42 ft. trawler - Queen Ann's Revenge for over four years.  Before retiring, they lived in West Des Moines for twenty years.  As is turned out, we knew several of the same people and enjoyed exchanging stories with them.  It's a small world .......

Space Shuttle Park -dedicated to the crew of Challenger

The marina is located in a park setting so we jumped on our bikes for a sunset tour of the property.  Gone was the humidity & brutal heat of the last couple of days - finally a night to enjoy the great outdoors.