The Adventures of Flat Stanley

These are the adventures of Flat Stanley with his visit with Andy McGuire’s Uncle Harry, who lives in Harrisburg Pennsylvania, as told by Flat Stanley himself.


Hello everyone, I arrived at Andy’s Uncle Harry’s house safe and sound and we are getting ready for a fun adventure. First we are going to go for a motorcycle ride on a Harley. Let me tell you.. that is one big cycle, especially from my view! I was able to sit up front and enjoy the ride. When I tried to reach the handlebars from the seat, I was just a little too short so I decided to let Harry drive.

Our next adventure was off to Washington DC for a little sight seeing. Our first stop was at the Washington Monument where wanted to see how tall I was compared to the monument. Next we stopped over at the White House to see the President but he was a little busy at the moment. I did get a nice picture of his house. Well since the President was busy we decided to just head down to Cape Canaveral Florida.

Here is a picture of silly me in Florida trying to climb a Palm tree. Well we finally arrived at NASA for our tour and boy was it fun. We visited the Apollo/Saturn visitors center and toured the grounds.

This building here is the Vehicle Assembly Building where all the rockets and space shuttles are put together. The little building on the left is the command center you see on TV when a shuttle is launched. After the shuttle takes off, the command center is switched to the NASA center in Houston Texas.

Here is a picture of me on the observation deck half way out to the launch pads. In the background is the vehicle assembly building and the long road they use to bring the rockets and space shuttles out to the pads on.

This picture is the actual crawler-transporter they use to move the space vehicles from the vehicle assembly building to the launch pad which is approximately 3.5 miles away. It was pretty exciting to see since they were actually moving it as we went by. Can you guess how fast it travels? The maximum speed is 1 mph when it’s loaded and it doubles it’s speed to 2 mph when it’s unloaded. This crawler weights about 6 million pounds and can carry a load up to 12 million pounds. That’s just a little bit more the I weigh!
Here I am standing in front of one of the spare crawler cleats. This one cleat alone weighs 2,000 pounds and it takes 57 of these cleats to make up each of the eight belts that pull the crawler along it’s path.

Here is a picture I took of the long road the crawler has to travel. Do you remember how far it has to go to get to the launch pad? Three and a half miles! Here is launch pad 39A where the shuttles leave the earth from. This is a picture of how the shuttle gets connected to the launch pad. Everything swings in and out of place to hold the shuttle until it lifts off. This is me in front of one of the shuttles main engines it uses to lift off.

Well it was time to continue on with my tour. Off we went to see the Saturn 5 rockets that took the Apollo astronauts to the moon and back. Here I am again! Boy those rocket engines sure made me feel small! Do you know how many landings there were on the moon? The correct answer is 6. They were Apollo 11, the first one, through Apollo 17. The only one that didn’t make it was Apollo 13. You may have seen the movie about it that was out a few years ago.

Here I am again! I was checking out the lunar module. I bet I could fly one of those! The inside of it doesn’t look to hard. Just push a button here, flip a switch there and you’re off to the moon! Now if I can only figure out if they have a space suit in my size!

Hey! Look at me.. I can drive a rover training vehicle. Guess what I got to touch! An actual moon rock! Just imagine.. me Flat Stanley touching a moon rock! This rock was brought back on Apollo 17 and they say it’s pretty old.

Here is a picture I took of how sizes of the Saturn 5 rockets and the space shuttle compares. I wonder where I fit in this comparison? Hey.. look at me! I’m in the rocket garden! I wonder how much they had to water these to make them grow! Well, here I am in front of a shuttle. Say cheese! Maybe I can hop on one and take a ride! Guess who.. it’s me again!

Well that ends my tour of NASA and here I am with my buddy Harry. It was fun traveling with him, even though he is a Steelers fan.. Well I’m off for another adventure with my other buddy Andy!

See you all later!
Flat Stanley