Synth.nl visits Kennedy Space Center

As you know I'm in last stage of finishing my upcoming Apollo album. I have been throwing a lot of 3D stuff at you the last period, but here is some real stuff coming. We decided to take a trip to Florida USA where I am at the moment and yesterday we visited the Kennedy Space Center for some final inspiration for the album. I really like to get in the mood for a project like this and I thought there would be no better way than this. Here is a picture of me under the big NASA logo after the entrance.

We booked a special tour called 'now and then' that also visited the air-force base where the Mercury and Gemini projects took place. I will post a separate blog item about that, because it was very special. But on the tour we also saw a lot of the launch pads that are still currently in use and we saw the Vehicle Assembly Building that I just made in 3D. So it was nice to see it for real and get a sense of the size of it. Imagine the size of this thing with a complete Apollo rocket standing in it. In the left corner of the picture you can also see one of the crawlers that were used to transport the Saturn V rocket to the launch pad and just recently was still used to transport the last Space Shuttle to its final destination. We just missed this last launch by the way by a couple of hours :(

Even though the visit to the Air-force base was spectacular, the highlight of the tour was a visit to the Apollo/Saturn V Center. They have the original launch control center of the Apollo 8 flight in there and they made a real launch scenario with it. Everything is automated and while experiencing the launch on a big screen you can feel the vibration and see the whole control center light up and acting long. An awesome experience for sure. I filmed the largest part of it so maybe I can even use this footage somewhere in my promo film later on, since it is quite authentic. After this presentation you are guiding into a big hall where the inspiration got even better.

In that hall is a real Saturn V rocket up for display. It is hanging over your head and the size of it is enormous. It is even way too big to get into a picture. You can see all the stages of the rocket separately and also there is a separate model of the LEM and Command Module. Awesome too see. At the main Kennedy Space facility there is also the rocket garden with a Saturn 1b model, that is a little smaller. All in all I can't wait to continue work on the project now and that was exactly the purpose of this visit :) After the Apollo stuff we also watched some more recent Space Shuttle related things and the last thing we did was a ride on the Space Shuttle Launch Simulator. Awesome :) It really gives you a feel what a real launch is like. If you are ever in the Florida area I can really recommend a visit to the Kennedy Space Center.