{"id":2081,"date":"2010-12-13T21:38:21","date_gmt":"2010-12-14T05:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/?p=2081"},"modified":"2017-06-08T01:18:36","modified_gmt":"2017-06-08T08:18:36","slug":"spaceships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/2010\/12\/13\/spaceships\/","title":{"rendered":"Spaceships!!!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Anything on the map that in any way relates to spaceships tends to be difficult for me to avoid, and thus it was that today&#8217;s destination was the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/centers\/marshall\/\">Marshall Space Flight Center<\/a> in Huntsville, Alabama.  After a cold (temperature: 19&deg;F) pre-dawn wakeup followed by another thirty or so miles of the Natchez Trace Parkway, the Subaru and I set off across Northern Alabama in search of rockets.  At about ten o&#8217;clock the top of a Saturn V became visible on the horizon, and from that point onwards my mood was of the sort that usually leads Audrey to disavow that she actually knows me.<\/p>\n<p>The space center is home to a museum that features a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Saturn_V\">Saturn V rocket<\/a> that was never sent into space.  It&#8217;s the largest and most powerful space vehicle ever produced by man, with each of the five first-stage engines measuring twelve feet in diameter, and a total rocket height of over 36 stories; I was giddy.  In addition to the Saturn V, the actual Apollo 16 command module, tons of mockups from other missions, and a &#8220;Rocket Garden&#8221; with everything from full-scale models to test vehicles were all on display.  Since it was a Monday in December the staff seemed to outnumber visitors, so there was plenty of space to take it all in.  While I generally try to keep him at bay, today the inner geek ran wild and free.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"img-main\" src=\"\/photos\/images\/2010-12-A\/5213_marshall_space_center_saturn_v_third_stage.jpg\" width=\"400\" height=\"600\" alt=\"Saturn V Third Stage\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"caption\">Saturn V third stage.  You would think there would be lots of amazing photos to show off the day&#8217;s sights, but for some reason what little photographic ability I might once have possessed seems to have disappeared on this trip.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anything on the map that in any way relates to spaceships tends to be difficult for me to avoid, and thus it was that today&#8217;s destination was the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. After a cold (temperature: 19&deg;F) pre-dawn wakeup followed by another thirty or so miles of the Natchez Trace Parkway, the &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/2010\/12\/13\/spaceships\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Spaceships!!!&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8,30],"class_list":["post-2081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","tag-banjo-tour","tag-photography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2081"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2094,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081\/revisions\/2094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}