During a recent field trip to Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, the on-site expert offered some sage advice when asked about the relative safety of rocketry venues.
“I don’t recommend launching bottle rockets in mom’s kitchen,” said KSC lead educator Phil Bradley, who was demonstrating to a group of youngsters how to make a homemade rocket with a 2-liter bottle, baking soda and vinegar.
He and fellow educator Ben Hedgecock fielded other important inquiries from the three dozen Palm Bay Elementary School students such as, “Is that duct tape?” and “Are you the actor from ‘Wolverine’?” directed at the scruffier of the two educators and “Why can’t we do this inside?”
“Why, because science needs its space,” Bradley replied.
The students donned protective goggles and stood back about 80 feet from a mobile launch platform — in this case, a folding table in a parking lot — with a towering life-size model of a space shuttle external fuel tank and solid rocket boosters looming in the background, just outside the Space Shuttle Atlantis exhibit.
Three times the bottle rocket took flight, as onlookers collectively chanted “10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, blast off!”
Banshee-like shrieks of excitement ensued as each bottle shot up to about 100 feet high, then careened in haphazard reentries. A couple landed within feet of the students, but one ended up on an administration building’s rooftop.
With the scent of vinegar wafting across the parking lot, the giddy excitement of the gaggle of children was mixed with the real purpose of the exercise: learning.
This was the culmination of a lesson about chemical reactions.
“A chemical reaction is when two elements — two molecules — mix. They mix and they create something new,” Bradley said noting that baking soda, or sodium bicarbonate, and vinegar turn into carbon dioxide, water and a type of salt. “So three things that we didn’t have before.”
Rocket launch demonstration to students from Palm Bay Elementary School during the Arm & Hammer Baking Soda Rocket Day at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, on Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025. (Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda/Orlando Sentinel)
He also confirmed to one inquiring, youthful mind that it was similar to what happens when you insert Mentos in a bottle of Diet Coke.
The interaction is just one feature of this near-daily experience at the visitor complex, which is one of the prime field trip destinations for local schools.
“They come from all around the world. So it’s not just Central Florida. It’s not just Florida. We have international youth groups, student groups that come and visit us. So we are global,” said Dionne Wallington, KSC’s director of education, consumer events and marketing operations.
The attraction has been privately run by contractor Delaware North in partnership with NASA since 1995. The company doesn’t release visitor numbers, but said it hosts hundreds of students a month.
“Field trips have always been a component,” she said. “They’re certainly growing and becoming more sought after.”
That estimate of hundreds per month is on the low side, based on the totals reported just by the Orange County School District.
“It’s probably top five for one of our bigger trips of the year,” said Joshua Niesman, a senior manager in risk management who oversees field trips for Orange County Public Schools.
The other big trips include Disney, Universal, St. Augustine and the Orlando Science Center.
Already for the 2025-26 school year, he said Orange County schools have booked 28 trips to KSC, slated to go this fall or early next year and totaling about 2,500 kids across elementary, middle and high school age. More will come in the spring.
Last year, he estimated, the district booked nearly 90 visits, topping 7,500 students just from Orange County.
The price is designed to be attractive for educational institutions with KSC offering a $23 per youth group admission compared to $77 for a standard adult admission.
Niesman said KSC checks the right boxes for a school district field trip.
“Every trip has to serve a educational experience. So our board is very, very clear on you have to have something in there that gives us an educational component, which is why we love Kennedy Space Center.”
Wallington says what the kids get to experience includes history, adds fun and can spark interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education.
“I enjoy being able to inspire the next generation and sharing that NASA story,” she said. “It is something that not everybody gets to do. We are here — a part of it. We’re a part of the story.”
She said the attraction introduces youth to facets of space-based exploration they may have not known about before.
“There’s many career fields that the students can find out about coming here. It’s not always just the astronauts that are the jobs that are needed. It’s across the board,” she said. “So it’s really cool to see that light turn on.”
