Space at the Kansas Cosmosphere

The second you walk in the door, you can tell it's not a regular county museum. You walk straight into the side of a SR-71 Blackbird. A real, huge, flown, world-record fast, spy plane. Outside, you see rockets. Space rockets. Launch me to the moon rockets.

It's the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, Kansas . A Smithsonian Affiliated museum in the middle of the country.

Admission rates are quite resonable. A full day pass, including an IMAX ticket and a bunch more, is only $15 for an adult, $12 for kids.

Dr. Goddard's Laboratory is a fun, blow-stuff-up, live explanation of how rockets work. The adults had a good time, too. Guys of all ages like to see stuff blow up. We were the last show of the day, so we got to watch the performer dump out all the leftover liquid oxygen, creating an instant flow of cold smoke at our feet. (I'm getting Flickr photos up, real soon now.) That's included in your full-day pass.

Watch for much more from the Cosmosphere.