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// December 16 [Kennedy Space Center] 
// Story: Silver Glow's Journal 
// by Admiral Biscuit 
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December 16

I got up a little bit early and wrote in my journal some—I hated to leave bed but Aquamarine and Cayenne were both sleeping together so they probably wouldn't miss me too much and I knew that if I didn't write in my journal some today I'd get way behind and maybe never catch up and I didn't want that to happen.

And then the three of us took a shower together and groomed and then went downstairs to meet our helpers.

There wasn’t breakfast at the hotel unless we wanted to order room service, but that was okay because Mister Salvatore said that we were going to stop on the way for breakfast. And so we drove out of the center of town and took a little detour to get to a Waffle House. It turned out that Aquamarine had never eaten at one so me and Cayenne and Mister Salvatore all told her what was good there, and she got covered hash browns and Cayenne got hers peppered and I had a waffle and eggs because I didn't like hash browns all that much.

Then we went back to the road we’d been on yesterday and this time when we got to the Kennedy Space Center we turned into their parking lot and went right by the big rocket that was in front, which were the booster rockets for the Space Shuttle, which was a special airplane that could fly in space.

The first place that we went was to the Heroes and Legends wall, which was outside and was a memorial to the pioneering American Astronauts who had first orbited Earth in their little capsules and then gone all the way to the moon. I'd seen one of them at the Air and Space museum and I thought I'd go crazy if I had to be stuck inside it for days at a time, but they'd done it.

And they also had what they called a rocket garden, and it had all the different rockets which America had used to get into space, from the Juno which was the first rocket to put an American satellite in space, and the Mercury rockets which carried astronauts up into space. And there was also a Saturn IB, which was even huger than the others—it was so big it had to be on its side 'cause if it was standing up it would be too tall, and the sign by that one said that it had been set aside in case it was needed for a rescue mission on Skylab, which was a space station before the International Space Station.

There was a room called the White Room which was where astronauts got ready to go into space and we could go in that, and then walk along the gangplank that had carried them into their spaceships. There were pictures of it being used and it was actually supposed to be way above the ground, on a tower but now it was set down low where we could get to it. And it also had a mission trainer that let us try and fly the Apollo which wasn't very easy at all, and I was glad that it didn't matter when we crashed. I think if we had had a training pilot with us, we could have done it, because I'd figured out how to fly airplane simulators and this was kinda the same.

Then we went to see the little space capsules, which were used for Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. They weren't real, so you were allowed to get into them and they were really crowded for us. Everything was covered in buttons and switches and gauges and controls so that they could pilot their rocket and then navigate to the moon. I guess you'd just have to sleep in your seat, 'cause there weren't any beds, and you'd have to be really careful not to reach out and touch something that you weren't supposed to.

We went to the astronaut hall of fame next, which had a replica of the Space Shuttle outside of it. And its wings looked like they were too stubby to fly, but Mister Salvatore said that it went so fast that the stubby wings were all that it needed, and he explained how it had to set up for its landing when it was half a world away and then it glided all the way in. And it had special tiles on the bottom that absorbed the heat and one time they had gotten damaged and the space shuttle Columbia had burned up in the atmosphere because it got too hot.

Inside, they had reliefs of the most famous astronauts, and it said what they were famous for, and I read all of them before I went to look at anything else. Maybe they couldn't fly on their own like I could, but they were brave enough to take tiny little rockets into space just to explore.

They had space suits on display, which looked kind of like diving suits but instead of holding pressure out they had to hold it in because there was no pressure in space. And they also had to keep the astronaut cool, because even though it got colder and colder when you flew higher, once you got to space it got hot again because there was nothing stopping the sunlight.

There was also a big moon rock, but it was fake, because the real one was too precious to put out in the open. And I said that there was also a moon rock at the Smithsonian but I hadn't been able to touch it, 'cause my hoof wouldn't fit in the display.

So when we were done looking around in there, we went to the Space Shuttle building which had a real space shuttle on display, and there were lots of other displays that explained how they had been designed and built and pictures of it riding on the back of a normal airplane which was really neat. It couldn't fly very well on Earth, because it couldn't go fast enough on its own, so it had to be carried around by a Boeing 747.

And they had a memorial to the two crews who had been lost with their shuttles, which was sad. Going to space was dangerous, and humans were really bold to try it.

They had a hooves-on simulator where you could try and fly the space shuttle and it was a lot more like a real airplane but faster, and so we all took turns and I was the best at it. You could dock with the International Space Station and land on Earth, and it was very helpful and told you what you needed to do. The controls weren't very hoof-friendly, though, and we needed a little bit of help from Mister Barrow. I thought with some practice I could probably fly the real thing, as long as there was someone telling me what I needed to do.

Then we went to a big display about the Hubble Space Telescope and I knew a bunch about that from my astronomy class. They had a model of it, too, and I hadn't expected it to be so big. I guess it made sense, though: I knew that the bigger the telescope, the further you could see with it.

And there was a short movie just about how astronauts had fixed it when it was up in space and they'd found out that it was broken, 'cause the mirror had been made wrong.

After that, we went to see the International Space Station, which let you go inside to see what it was like. And it was kind of crowded, too, and I don't think that I'd want to spend too much time inside of it, but humans were living there for months at a time until a spaceship came to take them back to Earth, and they were doing important experiments up there in space.

So I told Aquamarine and Cayenne how I'd seen it going by, 'cause Sean had showed me where it was. And there was a computer where you could look up when it was going to pass overhead and it looked like we might be able to see it on the 17th, although it would be before the sun set so it might be really hard to see. But Sean had told me that if you knew where to look you could see it during the day, so I was hopeful that we might get a chance.

Then we got to go on board the Space Shuttle Launch Simulator and got a mission briefing from an astronaut called Charles Bolden. And the seats weren't too comfortable and it was kind of bumpy inside and it was so loud when it took off that we all pinned our ears and I accidentally hit Cayenne with my wing.

And then something went wrong and red lights started flashing and for a moment I forgot that it was all fake and almost flew out of my seat to safety, and then the roof opened and we could see the Earth below us.

We ate lunch at the Rocket Garden Cafe, and I had mahi mahi tacos, which were really good. I offered to share them, ‘cause I got two, but neither Aquamarine or Cayenne wanted to try one.

After lunch, were supposed to go and see the launch from the Saturn V center, but Mister Salvatore told us that the launch had been scrubbed and they were going to have to reschedule it, which was really disappointing. But he said we could still go to the Saturn V center if we wanted to, or we could spend some more time here first.

Since we hadn’t seen everything here, I wanted to stay where we were. So we went and got to watch a movie about how NASA wanted to send people to visit Mars. They weren’t sure yet how they were going to do it because it was going to be a very long trip, and when they got to Mars there might not be any water or air—there was supposed to be some water maybe but they hadn’t found it yet, even though lots of robots were crawling around Mars looking for it. And they had a bunch of pictures from the surfaces of Mars, ‘cause the robots had cameras so you could see what they saw.

There were a lot of theories on how it could be done, but nobody was really sure if it would work. It wasn’t like Star Wars or Star Trek, where people could sail through space pretty easily.

Cayenne said that she’d seen a movie called The Martian which was about a man who was stuck on Mars and so she really paid attention to everything that they said in the museum, ‘cause we both knew that movies weren’t really real. But she said that a lot of stuff in the movie was pretty close to being real.

When we were done looking at everything that they had at the Kennedy Space Center, we went outside and waited for a bus to take us to the next part of the museum, ‘cause it was so big that they needed a bus to get from one place in it to another. And when we were outside we found a big globe that had all the constellations on it and it was floating on a little cushion of water so you could turn it easily even though it was really heavy. I guess it was supposed to be for kids to play with but it was fun for us, too. I was kinda curious who could turn it the fastest, but both Aquamarine and Cayenne were wearing shoes and thought that they might damage it by mistake, so we didn’t try.

The whole complex was pretty open, ‘cause rockets needed a lot of space. Mister Salvatore said that sometimes they exploded on the launch pad, too, so you didn’t want to have anything too close to where they took off.

When we got over there we went right inside and the building had a Saturn V rocket inside, which was what they had used to get to the moon, and it was immense. It wasn’t as big as a skyscratcher or the Mackinac Bridge, but those things didn’t move and the rocket did, and it not only moved but it flew all the way into space. And most of it fell off before it got there, ‘cause it was built in sections and when each section ran out of fuel it would fall off to make the rocket lighter which was actually really clever the more I thought about it. It was like how a diver could drop her weights when she wanted to go back up.

And they had a command module, which I had seen before, and also a lunar module which was the part of the spaceship that landed on the moon. It looked kind of like an insect, and there were pictures showing how it worked, and how part of it could fly back off of the moon and go back to the command module to return the astronauts to Earth. It was a little strange to think about how the astronauts had their big Saturn V rocket when they left Earth and when they came back they just had a little capsule. It would be like if a sailing ship left for Prance and all that came back was one dory.

Then we went and watched a movie that was about the Apollo mission to the moon, and it showed us what the command center was like. I told everyone that I’d gotten to see a space command center in Colorado, ‘cause Peggy’s mom had taken me there. That hadn’t been quite as exciting as the one in the movie, because just putting satellites in space and keeping them from crashing into each other was fairly routine for humans, but going to the moon wasn’t, especially since they were racing the Communists there.

And since they won, America got to put a flag on the moon and then nobody else could.

Then we got to look at another sliver of moon rock and this one was real and it was inside a little glass cover that let humans touch it but not ponies which was really unfair. Even when Aquamarine stuck her muzzle right up to the edge she couldn’t quite get to it and Cayenne said that maybe she could take the top cover off with her magic but Mister Barrow told her that she shouldn’t do that because we’d get kicked out of the museum. And I did get my wingtip on it but I couldn’t really feel it properly with just feathers. So we were all feeling a little bit sad about that until Miss Cherilyn reminded us that I could fly and Cayenne could use magic and Aquamarine could bring plants forth and nohuman could do any of those things, and that made us feel a lot better.

It had been really fun seeing everything and I wished that we could stay longer, but we had other plans for the evening and the museum was closing pretty soon anyway. So we went back outside and waited for the bus to take us back to the Space Center.

We had a little bit of time to look through the gift shop and they had lots of things that I liked there but I couldn’t afford to buy everything that caught my eye and even if I could I couldn’t take it all back to Equestria with me (and where would I put it when I got there?). So I got a book that was about space exploration and had lots of beautiful pictures and also some astronaut ice cream, ‘cause Mister Salvatore said that I’d probably be able to take that through the portal and my friends would like how weird it was. And maybe if I was feeling like pulling their tails, I could tell them that all human ice cream was like that.

Then we got back in the Suburban and Mister Salvatore drove us back to Orlando, and I had to decide what I wanted to do tonight.

Aquamarine was going to go see a basketball game—the Orlando Magic was playing the Brooklyn Nets in the stadium that was right by our hotel. And Cayenne had decided that instead of watching the basketball game she wanted to go to Hamburger Mary’s. That was a bar that had drag queens, who were men that dressed up to look like women, and that sounded pretty interesting, too. I couldn’t be both places at once, so I had to choose and I didn’t know which would be better.

I didn’t know much about basketball, but it was probably a lot like football, and it was really fun to be with a big group of people all cheering on the team, so that was a good reason to go with Aquamarine; on another hoof, there was still a lot I didn’t understand about human fashion and so I might learn something new if I went with Cayenne, and I also hadn’t spent a whole lot of time with her which was kinda unfriendly of me.

I wasn’t sure if she’d had as much fun on our vacation as me and Aquamarine, except for yesterday at the beach, ‘cause she was really social and playing in swamps and visiting rocket gardens wasn’t all that social.

Making a choice is really hard sometimes. Humans like to toss coins when they can’t choose things, and I suppose I could have asked one of our helpers for a coin—I could have even had them toss it for me—but I thought I’d just use the traditional pegasus method and so I closed my eyes and waited a minute and then started watching out the window to see what kind of bird I’d spot next. And it wasn’t too long before I saw a blue-grey bird soaring around and I didn’t know exactly what it was called but it looked hawky, so that meant I was going to go to Hamburger Mary’s with Cayenne.

We didn’t stop for dinner on the way back to Orlando, ‘cause me and Cayenne could get food at the bar, and Aquamarine was gonna get food at the basketball game.

The stadium and the bar were really close to each other, and to the hotel, too, so we drove back to the hotel and parked the Suburban and then we all walked to the stadium first. We had to go under the highway and across railroad tracks to get there, and it was really strange to see it while on hoof. I kind of wanted to fly up and stick my head above the barriers just for the fun of it but Mister Salvatore said I shouldn’t because I’d probably cause another traffic accident if I did.

Mister Salvatore and Mister Barrow went with Aquamarine to the basketball game and us ponies all nuzzled before she went inside, and I had a moment to change my mind, if I'd wanted to and I kind of did, 'cause it looked like it would be fun, but I'd made my choice and I was gonna stick with it.

So we walked a block back to Hamburger Mary's, and they had a sign with a mermaid (which is a human seapony) on it, and it was right by the railroad tracks which was probably really convenient for people, 'cause there was a train stop right by it.

There were lots of people in there and we had to look around a bit before we found a table where we could sit, and I laughed when Miss Parker and Miss Cherilyn got out a quarter and tossed it to decide who the designated drinker was. And Miss Parker won, so when our waitress came around she ordered a Long Island Iced Tea, and Miss Cherilyn got a Coke.

Cayenne got a whiskey sour and I ordered a white russian, and then the waitress asked us if we wanted to order any appetizers but we hadn’t decided on what we wanted to eat yet, ‘cause we were still looking at the menu.

When the waitress came back with our drinks we still hadn’t decided on food yet. Cayenne ordered a second whiskey sour even though she hadn’t even started on her first, but as soon as the waitress had left she drank the whole thing at once instead of sipping at it like a sensible pony. And Miss Cherilyn took a deep breath and looked longingly at Miss Parker’s Long Island Iced Tea.

When she came back with Cayenne’s second drink, we’d figured out what we wanted for an appetizer. I got a quesadilla and Cayenne wanted to order Mary’s Hot Legs, which were spicy chicken wings. And it kind of bothered me that she wanted to eat chicken wings, more than when people ate them, because it didn’t seem right for a pony to. Cayenne insisted that it was proper bar food though, and I guess if that was what she liked it was okay. She never got mad when I ate fish, so I guess I shouldn’t be upset if she wanted wings.

Our waitress was expecting us to know what we wanted as our main course, but we hadn’t figured that out yet, so she went off to tell the chefs what to cook for us.

By the time we got our food, the bar was getting pretty packed. And then three people came up on the little stage that they had and started singing, and they were all men dressed like women but they could have fooled me. I think maybe if I’d been close enough to sniff them I might have been able to tell, but from back where we were sitting they looked exactly like women. And the three of them started singing and they all had beautiful voices. They were called Ginger Minj, The Minx, and Aysia Black. She He was really pretty and looked a lot like Tina who had lived downstairs from me, except that he had slightly darker skin.

By the time they’d finished their first set of songs, I’d had three drinks and was ready for some more food, and I don’t know how many Cayenne had had. The waitress kept coming over and bringing her more. And then a man (I think) wearing a big feathered cape went up and joined them on stage and they all sang a song called It’s Raining Men.

It was getting louder, ‘cause everyone was really getting into the performance, and even Miss Parker was clapping and singing along as the four of them sang, and then when the song was over Ginger Minj pointed to us and said how good it was to see ponies in the crowd and Cayenne got up and wiggled her rump and then she got invited up to the stage to sing with them.

She was a really good singer, even after she’d had a lot to drink, and I guess that she knew a lot of human songs, ‘cause she sang one called Don’t Let the Sun go Down on Me with them. That was a song that I’d never heard, and it was really beautiful.

Our main course came while she was still up on stage singing, and our helpers were both looking up there watching her, and even though I probably shouldn’t have I was curious and maybe had had a bit too much to drink already, so I took a little nibble out of the corner of her buffalo chicken sandwich and it was a bit spicier than I liked but the chicken was pretty tasty. It tasted kinda like tuna, but less fishy.

And then I felt really bad for eating a bird, even though it was okay to do that on Earth. And I also felt bad for eating her food, although when she came back she didn’t notice that the corner of her sandwich had been bitten off.

Later on, when we’d finished our meal and had more to eat she got me to come up to the stage too, and we sang Renegades and I had to hum for some of the song ‘cause I couldn’t remember the words. It’s strange how you can have a song in your head but when you go to sing it you can’t remember quite what it’s like. And then we sang Razzle Dazzle, which The Minx also knew, and he sang along with us, and there were a couple of people in the audience who did, too, even though it was in Equestrian. It was really weird to be singing that and hearing people singing along and I had tears in my eyes when it was over. And there was so much applause after we’d finished, even though none of us were as good as Countess Coloratura.

And before we left stage we got big hugs from all the drag queens and the man in the feather cape, and then on the way back to our table we got more hugs and hoofbumps and then there were new drinks waiting cause someone had bought them for us which was really nice of them.

We didn’t leave until it was pretty late and we staggered back to our hotel singing The Magic Inside, and I was glad that the hotel was really close ‘cause I was having trouble walking and I think I would have flown except that I was following Miss Cherilyn who was the only one who remembered where we were going. Cayenne had gotten a cigarette from someone and was smoking that as we walked—she’d used her magic to light it, and I thought she looked really human because of it. She was a lot drunker than I was, and could barely walk straight and I finally decided to carry her but she was heavier than she looked and I was struggling to walk with her draped over my back. I was glad that Miss Cherilyn knew where to go, ‘cause we would have gotten completely lost otherwise and maybe been wandering around Orlando until we sobered back up.

Aquamarine wasn’t back yet when we got to our room, and it took both of us to get our door open, ‘cause neither of us could remember how the plastic card was supposed to work. And then we both collapsed in bed together and I sort of wanted to stay awake until Aquamarine got back but I was too tired.