Brevard County, United States - Polarsteps

Included in the visitor complex admission ticket, is a bus tour. The bus departs from the visitor complex and drives passed the vehicle assembly building, several launch pads and drops you off at the Apollo/Saturn V Centre. That large building with the American flag is the vehicle assembly building. This is were they put the rocket or shuttle together before it gets moved by the crawler via the gravel road towards the launch pad. The crawler moves with 1 mile (1,6km) per hour. To give you an idea of how big this building actually is; the flag which is painted on the building is 21 story high and it takes 250 billion pingpong balls to fill this building up! The launch pad you see with the water tower next to it, is the SpaceX launch pad. At time of launch, it gets around 2200 degrees Fahrenheit or 1200 degrees Celsius on the ground underneath the rocket. The water tower will release roughly 1.1 million litres of water per minute via a specially designed system just seconds before and during the launch. You might think that the water is being used to lower the temperature or prevent fire, but this is not the case. The water actually counters vibrations which are caused by the rocket. Otherwise the rocket will destroy/damage itself with its own vibrations.