This, my friends, is the business end of a Saturn V, the rocket that took men to the moon.

After all these years, and in spite of the best efforts of the Russians, the Chinese, and Elon Musk, the Saturn V is still the most powerful rocket ever built. It could deliver 140 metric tons to low earth orbit. That’s more than twice the Falcon Heavy’s payload, six times the Space Shuttle’s, bigger than anything the Russians ever had, and about where the Chinese will be in another decade. Let’s look at some more pictures of this monster.

We visited the Kennedy Space Center, where the moon missions took off. There is a treasure trove of space memorabilia in the various exhibit buildings there. Here are a few of my favorites.

The hand held propulsion unit used in the first spacewalk.

The Apollo 14 command module, that went to lunar orbit and came back.

The spacesuit that Alan Shepard wore on the surface of the moon.

There is still moon dust on the legs. Moon dust is vicious stuff, fine, abrasive, and electrostatically charged so it clings everywhere. Astronauts had o wear special overshoes when they were outside so they did not track any into the lunar lander. Speaking of lunar landers. The last few moon missions were canceled by Congress to save money, so there are some spares lying around.

Solid fuel boosters and fuel tank for the Space Shuttle.

Inside the building behind them, the the Space Shuttle Atlantis.

Unlike the shuttle we saw in LA, this one is displayed with the cargo bay open so you get an idea just how much it could haul into space.

The whole Space Shuttle program started with this prototype.

On the way out we took a quick tour of the Rocket Garden, a collection of the launchers used in the early space program. These were the rockets that launched Telstar, Mercury, and Gemini spacecraft into orbit.

My favorite exhibit is the bit of moon rock that you can touch.

That is from the moon! That thing in the sky a quarter of a million miles away. We went there and brought it back.