It really is rocket science – that which makes this place tick. If you want to make yourself feel really small and ignorant, stand under this Apollo moon rocket.    It’s like living in the land of giants. Everything is supersized.

Next year at the Kennedy Space Center visitors will be able to see the Atlantis space shuttle on display, but now the most exciting thing is still the hall with all the Apollo moon flight stuff. Some random things I learned: the astronauts had plaster casts made of their hands so that the spacesuits were custom fit. A geologist who had to train as an astronaut was aboard Apollo 17 to gather up moon rocks. They look like this, and are 3.7 billion years old.

But what they stress at the center, and what I took away from the experience is an appreciation for the difficulty of the task, the risk involved, and the number of people it takes to make any launch successful. The control room in this picture holds about 50 of those people. They are hooked up with people in Houston as well as people at the launch site. This doesn’t even take into account the hundreds who designed, built, and transported the rockets. As in so many areas of modern life, for every one person out in front getting the glory, there are hundreds of people working behind the scenes to make it happen. So, here’s a Tang toast to the nameless faithful who support the space program and other parts of American life that we totally take for granted now.