NASA Kennedy Space Center

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A couple of hours east of Orlando on the Atlantic ocean is Cape Canaveral. It is home to a massive air force base and missile range, but what it is probably most famous for is the Kennedy Space Center. The KSC is the main NASA site, all the Apollo missions to the moon were launched from here as well as the space shuttle missions. The whole precinct is absolutely massive with over 15000 people working there, most of whom are contractors for companies such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Interestingly only about 10% of the site is used by NASA, the rest of it is a humongous nature reserve home to plenty of alligators, pigs and bird life.

Jacob with a space orbiter
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Unfortunately we missed the landing of the orbiter from Shuttle Mission 116, which landed the night before we got there. We got to walk inside a demo space orbiter and see a Saturn V rocket, which NASA claims is the most largest and most complicated machine man has ever made.

The whole place was just amazing and really awe inspiring. It would have to have been my favorite activity on my whole USA trip. The technology and scale is nothing like anything we would see in Australia.