Space Center

Dear Blog

 

Bahamas Day 9 April 26^th Port Canaveral

 

Today we headed out to tour the Kennedy Space Center. I wasn’t entirely sure how excited I’d be. I’m not really a space buff, but even I know that Kennedy Space Center is NASA’s main launch site, not Texas or California. I knew Jay would be in his element and really enjoy the tour. Before joining the Fire Department, he worked at General Dynamics in San Diego on the Atlas booster. The Atlas booster is a powerful rocket stage originally built in the late 1950s, (Yeah, Jay had to explain that to me) He still remembers the day Scott Carpenter and John Glenn stopped by to see the preparations. In 1962 the Atlas booster launched John Glenn into orbit on the Friendship 7 mission.

 

When I was growing up in the sixties, everyone knew the astronauts’ names just as easily as we knew the ball players or movie stars. Armstrong, Glenn, Lovell, Shepard—they were true household names. We’d gather around the old black‑and‑white TV to watch the liftoffs, and it felt like the whole country paused for those moments. These days, people just don’t follow the space program the way they once did.

 

Life moves faster now, and our attention is splintered across countless distractions—from nonstop digital entertainment to the constant churn of news—making it harder for something like space exploration to command the same collective excitement it once did. Recent lunar missions like Artemis II have certainly boosted public interest, but they still don’t seem to match the excitement of the Apollo era.

 

I guess my most personal connection to the space heroes came from my brother Jay, who somehow ended up picking up John Glenn from the old Sacramento airport. The funny part is that he was only working a summer job at the California State Fair in the Art and Marketing Department. He was supposed to be designing posters and hauling display boards—not chauffeuring one of the nation’s most famous astronauts. But the day when Glenn arrived, every official or important person seemed to have vanished into thin air. Someone looked around, saw my brother standing there in his suit, and said, “You—go get Glenn.” And off he went. We even have a picture of him in a convertible, casually driving one of America’s most iconic astronauts around as if it were just another Tuesday.

 

I remember the big moments in space—like watching Neil Armstrong take that first step for mankind. I saw that monumental moment while I was cleaning a hotel room during my chambermaid days in Tahoe City. Just minutes later, I took a “giant step” of my own on a staircase, slipped with my mop bucket, and ended up in the Truckee emergency room to make sure nothing was broken.

 

Visiting the space center stirred up a whole pile of old memories—way more than I ever expected. And to my surprise, I absolutely loved the tour. After all, this is the place where real rockets blasted off, real astronauts trained, and real missions rewrite everything we thought we knew about the universe.

 

It was a good day, even though every exhibit was packed with tourists and it felt like all we did was wait — and I really hate waiting. I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I did. But John F. Kennedy said it best in 1962: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do other things… not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

 

The space center reminded me how far people can go when they dream big. Then, being back on the cruise ship reminded me how important it is to slow down, enjoy where you are, and appreciate the simple moments. Somehow the two experiences fit together perfectly — one lifting my eyes to the sky, the other bringing me gently back to earth.

 

We’re on a back‑to‑back cruise, which means a whole wave of new passengers just boarded for their first four‑day trip. God help us. At least our loud neighbors from the last leg are gone.