Today we took the tour of Spaceport America the private spaceport being used by Virgin Galactic to send people into space. The tour was interesting and an opportunity to visit a place which may have a significant impact on the development of space.
Google Earth view of the main terminal.
This view is from 32,000 feet showing the 12,000 foot runway. An interesting google footnote is these pictures were taken on December 14, 2013. There are newer pictures of Truth or Consequences, NM which is only a few miles west of here from April 1, 2015. I’d have to say Branson has some influence on where Google takes pictures.
This is where we walked into the hanger and into the visitor’s center. The visitor’s center had some new high-tech displays and information about space and the spaceport.
This globe shows the major satellite orbits around earth. Besides the 6 passenger spacecraft which will take people into space for 4 minutes, only $250,000 in advance, Virgin Galactic is working on a reusable craft to take satellites into space.
This is one of the displays they use for a plus G’s experience.
This is looking through a window down into the hanger and a mockup of the passenger space craft.
This is the admin and runway tower building, also the fire department of spaceport and surrounding area.
This is the hanger doors side of the building.
Here you can see the track for the four hanger bay doors on this side, there are four more on the other side of the building.
Our picture of the walk in entrance of the hanger.
Hanger and admin buildings.
This is a really long runway, 12,000 feet.
Cool sculpture at the entrance to the spaceport.
The stars on the inside of the curve.
I’m glad we went.
It was nice museum with a lot of information about the area.
From long ago.
And not so long ago.
Now remember this site has water, electric and covered picnic table for $14.00 a night and with our annual pass we get it for $4.00.
Here is the overhead view. We drove around a couple of times to get the site we wanted. The first site we stopped at was a nice site on the corner however a garbage dumpster was close to the site and to many people take their dog for a walk when they go to dumpster. Hank would have to let everyone know he was there to protect his campsite.
The Leasburg Dam is a diversion dam running most of the water into a canal.
This is what is left in the original river flow area looking up towards the dam.
This is looking down river and this is the largest flow area of the river bed.
My InReach GPS transmits it’s location to a satellite every 10 minutes when it’s moving and every 4 hours when it’s not moving.
It has an internal record of where it is every minute and when I sync the InReach over the internet you get a much smoother picture of our travels. If I was walking the blue line would pretty much be on the road.
We are in site 24 for tonight and Monday night. This campground is small and most of the sites are reserved during the week and all are reserved this weekend. When we were looking for a site I drove the motorhome and car into a spot where I had to unhook the car to be able to turn the motorhome around. This is only the second time I’ve go myself into a spot I could not get turned around. The first one was at a Pony Express Rest Site in the middle of no where on Hwy 50 in Nevada. Since I had the car off the motorhome I went and found a site and walked back to get Jean, Hank and motorhome.
Here are the site pictures.
A couple of view pictures.
One moon coming up picture.
Last year I added to ball valve to our shower. It is not the most “high end” shower fixture however it sure works great. It is a 1/4 turn on and off which makes controlling the water flow prefect. The hot and cold water mix values on motor homes are not the best quality and it’s difficult to get the right temperature when trying to use the least amount of water. Once I get the correct water temp I only have to use the ball valve to control the water flow.
This works great.
It was totally dark, the light is from lightening and this shows some of the rain.
I got some lightening in these pictures.
The sky was lighting up all around us.
