Tallahassee Democrat
23 January 2008
The John Fitzgerald Kennedy Space Center is (as everyone knows) located outside of Titusville. I just recently went there with my Cub Scout pack for an Overnight Adventure. That's where you do various activities and sleep under the world's largest rocket. My pack wasn't the only pack, however, to do the Overnight Adventure. Three other packs also slept under the rocket, but I'll tell you about that later.
First we went into an exhibit that had early space exploration models. Our tour guide told us all about all of the stuff. Then we went outside to the rocket gardens. They had lots of actual-size fake rockets. They were all tall!
We were allowed to walk around the gardens for approximately 15 minutes. Then we went inside this theater place and saw a presentation about our Overnight Adventure. Next, astronaut Bob Springer came to talk to us. He gave his own presentation that was quite interesting. One of the things he mentioned was how and what the astronauts ate in space. It was making me hungry, so we were lucky that dinner was next.
I heard that dinner wouldn't be so great, but it was really good. Everyone got a free delicious personal pan pizza, a fruit and a drink. After that, we went over to the Kennedy Space Center's IMAX theater and saw a movie about space.
Then, we loaded onto a bus that we had put all our sleeping gear into earlier. It took us over to a big building that had a mission-control theater and the world's largest rocket, where we slept that night.
The mission-control theater had rows where you stood and watched a short movie on screens right above a retired mission-control room.
Next, we went into a room that held the world's largest rocket. It is real, and it was planned to go into space when President Nixon had to cancel its flight. Now the rocket, named Saturn V, is on display at the Kennedy Space Center. We slept under it from after 11:30 p.m. till we woke up at 6:30 the next morning. I still have bags under my eyes!
But before that, we got to build our own lunar rover. We got into groups of four or five; then we built a rover with the materials we were given. The object was to build the rover that could go the farthest. It may sound easy, but we had to use a balloon's air to propel the rover. It was really fun even though no one from our pack won.
Early the next morning, we went into yet ANOTHER theater and got door prizes and found out who won the lunar-rover contest. That was the last event in our Overnight Adventure.
Nathan Morse is a fifth grader in Betsy Sullivan's class at Bucklake Elementary School.
