The Ryan RV Express: 08/09JAN14 - Biloxi, MS (on the way to fl)

Friday, January 17, 2014

08/09JAN14 - Biloxi, MS (on the way to fl)

Wednesday, 08JAN, we hit the road for Florida, & decided to only drive a few hours to go easy on the RV. There were no apparent problems with the RV engine cooling system repairs done in Houma, just seems to run five degrees cooler than before. The dash heat works great but couldn't keep up with record cold outside.

As usually we stopped at the Mississippi visitor center to get any casino "coupons" they had, & to check on Infinity Space Center Museum. After setting up camp at the Keesler Air Force FamCamp we headed to Jim Buffet's Margaretville Casino to use a five dollar blackjack coupon. We bet $5 & won $10 with the coupon & left immediately $10 ahead:)!

Our next stop was the Palace Casino for burgers. One of us felt a craving for a good, plain, cheeseburger with just lettuce, tomato & onion. Dan's internet research came up with a short list of highly rated burger joints in Biloxi; unfortunately the top two are only open for lunch. Number three was called Stacked & located inside the Palace Casino. We thought we were in the Palace back on 12OCT13 & were not impressed - well we were mistaken. We were in the old Imperial Palace Casino that the locals used to call the Palace & now is officially the IP. Anyway this Palace Casino is much nicer & is truly non-smoking. Oh yeah, the burgers were pretty good (Dan really liked the creamsicle shake!). What made Dan really happy was they had penny video poker machines:)!

Thursday morning we hopped into the Toad & headed to the Infinity Space Center located right next to the Mississippi Welcome Center at exit 2 I-10. This museum is dedicated to the Stennis Space Center just down the road, which was created in 1961 as the national center for rocket engine testing (aka Mississippi Test Operations). In 1965 the first Saturn V engine was test fired, since then every booster rocket & shuttle engine has been tested fired before being used for an actual mission. There has never been a mission failure of any engine tested at Stennis. They are currently testing the RS-25, J-2X & AJ26 rocket engines.

Originally the museum & tour of the Space Center were located at the Stennis Space Center. Visitors would gather at the Mississippi Visitor Center & board busses to the Space Center. Recently a large building was built next to the Visitor Center, named the "Infinity Space Center" & opened April 2012. Now every hour a bus (or busses) departs the museum for a short driving tour of the actual Stennis Space Center. We have tried twice to visit the museum - one time we discovered they are closed on Sundays; & the other time the Federal government was shut down & you couldn't go onboard Stennis. This time everything worked out.

Unfortunately we have to say we were not impressed with the museum! In our opinion this large new facility has very few exhibits in it. The layouts of the exhibits don't make sense - they don't follow a chronological line; or one minute you are looking at something about Saturn V & the next display is about NOAA weather buoys (note NOAA has a large facility on Stennis). Who ever designed the displays must have thought the more touch screen computers, the better; but often there were no instructions on how to use them or what to do? One display uses a Kinetic motion sensing system from MicroSoft - we have one & know it is very difficult to use for small screen movements. Almost everyone that tried the display walked away frustrated. Sound isolation between exhibits is poor & speakers system often drown each other out. Our list goes on.

The bus tour was the best part (& it was only average) since you could see the immense engine test stands (from a distance). You also learn about the noise & forces generated when they fired all five Saturn V engines at one time. In fact they made the mistake of firing the five engines with heavy cloud cover one day, & broke windows from Mobile to Baton Rouge! As a result they then built a large horn that sounded as loud as one engine; they would then sound the horn before a test firing; & if microphones many miles away picked up the sound, the test was cancelled. Now with computers & modern science they can predict the sound levels & the horn is no longer used.

Another shortcoming of the new arrangement is you are no longer allowed to view Wernher von Braun's office located above the "old" museum located in the middle of the Space Center. Most buildings on the Space Center are one or two stories tall, but Braun had his office built on a tower six stories up so he could view rocket engine testing from his office.