US Space and Rocket Center/Redstone Arsenal Visit (Part 1)

Posted from Gunter Hill COE near Montgomery, AL
  (Click on Pics to Enlarge)

One of the reasons we decided to stay in the Huntsville, AL area was to visit the US Space and Rocket Center. If you’re interested in taking anything more than a cursory look at this collection, a multi-day visit will be needed.  On 5/21/15 we ventured over to the visitor’s center to plan our visit.

We decided that today we would watch a movie entitled Journey to Space in the center’s 67 foot high IMAX theatre. The film illustrated the evolution of the US Space Program.  Very well done!

We also wanted to tour the Redstone Arsenal (an active Army base) which encompasses the Marshall Space Flight Center. This tour is only given once per day currently at 1:00 PM.

As we had several hours before the Redstone Arsenal Tour began we wandered around looking at the “free” exhibits around the visitor’s center.  The A-12 Blackbird is positioned just outside the entrance.  This plane amazes me in that it first flew in April of 1962.

Also on display is the space shuttle Pathfinder.  Although the Pathfinder never made a trip to space, it was used as a trainer here on earth.  The “stack”, a combination of rocket boosters, shuttle, genuine shuttle main nozzles and genuine external tank make this the ONLY such display in the world.

In the early days of our space program animals were first sent into orbit before attempting the same with humans. Miss Baker was a 1-pound squirrel monkey. Her grave is just outside the entrance doors to the visitor’s center.  She, along with Miss Able, were the first US animals launched into space and recovered alive. The pair spent 16 minutes in space on May 28, 1959. (Miss Able died on earth while surgeons attempted to remove implanted electrodes.) Miss Baker continued to live for a total of 27 years before dying in 1984.



The Marshall Space Flight Center is located on the Redstone Arsenal and first opened in 1960.  For a nice “quick history” lesson on the early days of the Redstone Arsenal as it related to rocket development take a look at this Wikipedia reference.

One of the first stops on the tour is at the International Space Station’s Payloads Operation Center.

After a brief explanation you get to view the actual control room where the operators are in contact with the astronauts in the ISS.

The next part of the tour continues on to the now historic Redstone Test Stand where static testing was done on many of the early rockets.

Nearby is the dynamic test stand where early tests were done on the Saturn V project rockets.  Actually, this stand is still in use today (Notice the small white rocket).

I thought the next stop at the Environmental Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSS) building was very interesting.  These folks deal with the day-to-day operations experienced by the astronauts.  This could mean designing systems to re-use and recover fluids to be used as water, to dealing with astronaut hygiene.

Of course, the group had questions about using the toilet in space, so I had to include a picture of that.













The “orientation” of the US Space and Rocket Center (along with our IMAX movie) and the bus tour of the Marshall Space Flight Center on the Redstone Arsenal took up our entire day.  Part 2 of this series will take a closer look at our day of touring only the US Space and Rocket Center.
For many more pictures of both of these facilities please take a look at our Google+ Albums:
US Space and Rocket Center
Redstone Arsenal/Marshall Space Flight Center



Thanks for dropping by to take a look!

Sometimes Things Work Out for the Better

Posted from Gunter Hill COE CG near Montgomery, AL       (Click on Pics to Enlarge)


After leaving Red Bay we decided to drive a couple of hours east to Huntsville, AL for two main reasons.  First, we wanted to take a tour of the Space and Rocket Center located in Huntsville and second Karen wanted to meet up with a prior co-worker she met in an office back in Virginia.  Denise now lives in Huntsville, AL and we’ve been meaning to stop by on several of our trips thru Huntsville, but something always prevented us from stopping in the past.

We made camping reservations at the US Space and Rocket Center Campground which is located within a 1/2 mile from the entrance to the Space Center.  This park has 30-amp only electrical and is getting a bit dated, but there are plenty of trees and it seemed like a nice choice.

The roads are a bit narrow, but easy to navigate if you take it easy.  We really liked the trees throughout and there was room between the sites.

Space Camp is held throughout the year at the US Space and Rocket Center for “budding” scientists and astronauts of the future.  There’s even a Space Camp for adults!  The kids build rockets which are fired off just outside the campground on a daily basis.  It was actually kind of fun to watch their enthusiasm when their rocket was ignited.

On the second day of camping here we began to have electrical problems.  We have a Progressive Industries EMS and it is designed to shut down power coming into the coach when the voltage drops below 104 volts.  This began happening several times per hour even though we had all of the major appliances (AC, water heater, battery charger, etc.) turned off in the coach. I didn’t like the cycling of the rig’s transfer switch while this was occurring, so I started talking to the neighbors about their power. I found that some folks had good incoming power and some were getting low voltages.  I believe we might have been at the end of the run on our row.  Although the choices of campgrounds around the Huntsville area is not great, one neighbor stated that he had stayed at a nice county park just northeast of Huntsville named Sharon Johnston Park.

We took a drive over to this park to check it out.  (About 30 minutes from the Space Center). It looked very nice, so we grabbed the camp host and reserved a site for the next 5 nights because the Memorial Day Holiday was quickly approaching.

It turned out we made a good choice. The FHU sites were $18 per day and the site pads are all asphalt.  The roads around this small campground are newly paved.

There are plenty of pavilions, both large and small, for picnic use. 

For the fisherman out there, there is a small lake as well.









The drive back and forth to visit the Space Center was a breeze and this campground was very quiet and away from the city. We will definitely stay here again when visiting in the area.

The second reason we’re here is to visit with Karen’s friend Denise.  We got together on Wednesday and met at Rosie’s Mexican Cantina in Huntsville for dinner. Another good choice.  The food was good and Karen and Denise got a chance to catch up on old times.  THANK YOU for dinner Denise!


The next blog entry will talk about our exploration of the US Space and Rocket Center and a day trip to Decatur for the Alabama Jubilee.


Thanks for stopping by to take a look!