BLAST!!!!!

I just got back from visiting the Space Center. So much fun for me. Totally touristy. I don't usually do this when I'm here, but other family members were in the area, they had a kid with them, they were going, and I thought "Space? Can I go too? :) "

Saw lots of cool things (Cool to me. Maybe boring to someone else!) Touched a moon "shaving" - That's what I called it. It's supposed to be a moon "rock" and they talk it up a lot. But it's a small flat triangular sliver. They probably replace it with a new sliver after it wears down.

Re "Blast," I saw a rocket launch. It sent a new satellite into space. Kinda neat. You can see it from other areas miles away, but it was neat to see anyway. There was also a simulation of the control room during an Apollo launch, and everything shook, and I couldn't help thinking that, although I wasn't nervous during the simulation, if it had been real, and the ground and control room and windows had shaken like that, I think I would have been freaked out by the extent of the power and the ground shaking.

Lots of things made me far more nervous about space travel instead of more comfortable with it. We/they must be out of their minds to do these things. They said the reason viewing areas are 3 miles away, is because the amount of explosives in a rocket was the same as a nuclear bomb. How insane is that for everyone involved?! And we do this regularly??? Is 3 miles even far enough away to escape a nuclear-type blast?!

The more I learn, the more I fear for these people. I don't think it's cooler and I don't think more along the lines of "Gee! I wish I could do this!" I think "HELL NO!" But there are people who know all of this, and more, and think "Cool!" - Must be out of their minds!