Old Time Rock-et Roll

I went to an old fashioned "rocket roll" today, oh my goodness, talk about another pretty cool experience, it certainly was! In the midst of this crazy busy week we decided this would be my last opportunity to see something such as this so we cut ties at the house and headed to the Cape for the "rolling of the rocket." This is an Atlas V rocket, now I have seen an Atlas V up close and personal before but I have not seen it roll.

The rocket is assembled in a building, a very big building to be sure and the Atlas is one of only a few rockets that get put together in the vertical position, so the building is very tall so they can do that. Yes I did go all the way to the top of the building when I saw the other rocket! It was very high up but it was very cool! This rocket is 20 stories tall! And in other statistics it is very heavy weighing in at just over 1 million pounds, yeah, one MILLION! (And I want to shed 7, seems trivial, huh?) Anyway, once it is all together they roll it over to the launch pad. That is what I watched today.

There was of course a mandatory safety briefing!

The Atlas V starting to make the roll to the launch pad.

Rolling out to the pad right behind us!

Safely on the pad and ready for lift-off tomorrow!

This was such a neat thing to see and I am not even close to being a rocket scientist :) I wish I would be able to return to the Cape for the launch but the movers will be here and I won't make it up in time. I will still see it from the house though!

All right back to the moving prep, they will be here in the morning between 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. which is pretty sweet considering sometimes it is as early as 7 a.m. We will already be up and moving by 7 but we won't have to be ready for the movers that early which is totally awesome in my world!