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If you want to see the inside of NASA’s gigantic Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), you better hurry. Tours cease in February.

If you want to see the inside of NASA’s gigantic Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), you better hurry. Tours cease in February.

Tours into the VAB have only occurred during gaps in the American space effort. I was lucky to visit Florida back in 1977, after the end of the Apollo program and before the start of the shuttle program, so my tour went inside the VAB. For the last few years, since the shuttle’s retirement, interior tours resumed.

The tour is worth it. If you can find the time and money, get down there now!

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

2 comments

  • Kelly Starks

    I wonder if safty issues with the VAB were a factor? I heard bits falling off the ceiling were a safty issue durring opperations.

    Would really like to see the inside of that monster. ;)

  • It gets closed when there are actual rockets in the building for safety reasons. During the shuttle era there were the solid rockets. There are also fueled hydrazine thrusters in the shuttle as well as future rockets.

    From 1975 to about 1979 no rockets were being assembled there, so it was safe to take tourists inside. Since the shuttle retirement in 2011 the same circumstances have applied. That is now ending.

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