This is not an 'A to Z' guide by any stretch of the imagination, but I have compiled 3 photo galleries below simply to summarise the overview. Full resolution versions of these and other images are centrally archived and may be released on a discretionary basis.
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Comparing southern Florida to Sylhet, Bangladesh
Southern half of Florida (roughly 24º to 28º north) lies along the same lines of geographic latitude as the northern half of Bangladesh.
The Florida keys are exactly on the same geographic latitude as Sylhet, Bangladesh (which I visited only 9 months earlier) but the two places are separated by 172º in longitude, putting them almost on opposite sides of the Earth's northern hemisphere.
3D graphic showing the relative positions of Sylhet & Florida on the planet. [Graphic: Abdul Ahad, Earth image courtesy: ESA]
According to my calculations using the standard formulae of 3D-coordinate geometry, the straight line (through the Earth) distance between Florida and Sylhet is approximately 11,385 km. Using the formulae of spherical trigonometry the great circle surface distance is approx. 14,040 km. (These calculations ignore effects of the small deviations in the Earth's shape from a standard sphere.)
Through the vacation, my journey covered the entire length of Florida state from the small town of Valdosta in southern Georgia all the way south to Key West, some 600 miles away deep in the Gulf of Mexico.
Away from large towns, Florida's overall landscape profile was very flat, with a generally smooth horizon line just like in Bangladesh. Tropical weather phenomena like silent lightning at night, tropical thunder storms, warm rain in vast quantities, etc. was just the same. It was a welcoming sight and most refreshing to see that a far away place on the other side of the world could be so much similar to my original homeland!
On the drive south from Orlando, along Florida's Turnpike highway to the small town of Okeechobee, my GPS registered an average elevation of just 15 metres or so above mean sea level. On highway 441 south, the elevation reduced further to just 5 to 10 metres in places, again reminiscent of Bangladesh. Roadside ditches were abundant in fish, water lilly and white Florida herons. Plenty of wildlife everywhere including swarms of BIG dragon flies and tiny Florida lizards. Even saw a dead Armadillo on the journey!
The green lines on this map show the approximate routes I took.
Standing on the northern shores of Lake Okeechobee - Indian for "big water" - in the breeze with waves gently splashing against the banks reminded me of my childhood back in Bangladesh. This is the second largest fresh water lake in the US, and it has water hyacinth growing on its surface, exactly the same type as what we find in Sylhet. The smell of decaying water hyacinth is very distinctive and can take you back a few years... Okeechobee is a very shallow lake, with an average depth of less than 20 feet. This shallow characteristic is shared by many of the vast seasonal freshwater lakes (we call "haors") found across Bangladesh. They swell to enormous sizes with the monsoon rains during the summer time in places close to my own village in the Sylhet region.
Further south, during my visit to the Everglades I went on an air boat for a cruise deep into the Miccosukee Indian reservation (off highway 41 west) to visit a historic Indian "water village". I saw a couple of large alligators and one small baby alligator along the way. The Everglades water lilly was abundant all around Florida, with a small distinctive white flower.
During my stay at Key Largo (exact location: +25.08.47.7, W80.23.44.5) the feeling I got was EXACTLY the same as what I have experienced in Sylhet at this time of year! The same sun intensity, air temperatures, humidity, sky appearance, tropical cloud patterns, thunder storms, night-time intense cricket chirpings, etc. The only differences were people and vegetation. Sylhet is more exotic and far less developed, with a wide variety of fruit trees, extensive rice fields, etc producing an altogether different smell to the air... I would say definitely more pleasant if you're in the right places. Florida's wild vegetation out in the countryside has a more bitter smell to it and is less pleasant, especially after a heavy down pour of warm rain as I experienced on a frequent basis.
Mosquitoes proved less prevalent in Florida compared to Sylhet for more natural reasons than I had previously imagined. "Science & technology" solutions did not in themselves provide the answer for controlling mosquitoes. Their numbers were less because southern Florida experiences less rainfall, there is less swampy vegetation and above all, there is less stagnant water around.
I did see some mosquitoes in the day time inside my hotel room in Key Largo even in late September, so there's an interesting similarity to Sylhet. Windows of many buildings in southern Florida were fitted with insect-screens all round to keep out mosquitoes and other flying insects.
Click here to visit an online site exploring some of the natural wonders of Bangladesh.
NASA Space Facilities at Kennedy Space Center
The centrepiece of my Florida 2003 vacation was not the Orlando theme parks and rides. Kennedy Space Center (KSC) on Merritt Island was my main focus, from where men left our world to venture out to the Moon way back in the 1960's & 70's...or so I had been told. In the immense geological time frames that we have been occupying this planet, our generation was the first to set foot on another world. Some famous person quoted this.
I was so captivated by the experience of being so close to the reality of manned spaceflight at KSC, that I took TWO NASA shuttle bus tours... on the second one, I upgraded my ticket to "guest" status and visited the restricted areas where I was shown buildings of the telecommunications centre, astronaut briefing and checkout facilities pre- and post-flight, behind the scenes processes and facilities that the ISS and Shuttle components go through pre- and post- space missions, close up views of the launch pads, crawler transporter, etc. etc.
Here are just a few of the hundred and fifty images I took...
The Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) is the world's 3rd largest building by volume of internal space. It is essentially a "rocket garage" where the giant Saturn 5 rocket stages were stacked together back in the Apollo Moon landing era. Today, the Space Shuttle orbiter is stacked with the ET and SRBs inside the VAB prior to each mission launch.
A few of the more prominent moments of visiting KSC for me were the IMAX "Space Station 3D" movie experience, the Apollo Moon mission launch simulation and Saturn 5 exhibit at the Apollo/Saturn 5 centre.
The Saturn 5 rockets that each took a crew of 3 people to the Moon and back were 110 metres tall and had a launch mass of 2.8 million kilograms. Each of the five F-1 engines used in the first stage of the Saturn 5 rocket produce over 1.5 million pounds of thrust for a total of over 7.5 million pounds thrust at sea level. This goes some way to describing the scale of these giant rockets.
I am dwarfed by the giant Saturn 5 rocket at the Apollo/Saturn 5 center at KSC. [Photo credit & copyright: AA Institute]
Here's an astonishing fact: The Saturn 5 rocket pictured above IS NOT A REPLICA. This is one of three remaining Saturn 5s built during the Apollo program, when NASA had plans for three further missions to the Moon after Apollo 17
in December 1972. One of the other two remaining Saturn 5s is located at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas and the third one can be found at a rocket museum in Huntsville, Alabama.
What this adds up to is this. Even though the original Saturn 5 blueprints may no longer be available, the US still has the potential capability to fuel these rockets today and organise Moon landings within a reasonably short period of time! For those who speculate China will eventually launch astronauts for the Moon soon after their orbital ventures, let me tell you that having seen these rockets first hand, it will not be easy to replicate the technology on such a massive and necessary scale. Copying Russian Soyuz orbital modules for developing a manned space platform is one thing. Sending people to the Moon and returning them safely back to the Earth is quite another. Arguably, I reckon China << may >> manage a robotic launch towards the Moon by 2010 using its Long March 3B rocket, which is supposedly equivalent to a Russian "Proton-class" launch vehicle.
China's push for Moon landings (human or robotic) may hopefully encourage the US to start on a
robotic outpost development on the surface of Mars, as advocated by the exceptional vision and imagination of the Planetary Society for a number of years.
Finally, here is one last photo of me standing next to a full scale replica of one of the surface vehicles comprising the $800 million 2003 Mars Exploration Rover mission, currently en-route to Mars to search for water and life-signs at the planet's equator:-
I am standing next to a full scale model of the Mars Exploration Rover [Photo credit & copyright: AA Institute]
