In perhaps an unintended degree of verisimilitude to the actual shuttle launch experience, a lot of the time on the Shuttle Launch Experience ride is spent waiting. As you wait on the gantry, monitors show a video where former astronauts describe what it was like for them to fly on the shuttle.
The galaxy we live in, called the Milky Way Galaxy, is a barred spiral galaxy composed of at least 100 billion stars. It is approximately 100,000 light years across and about 1000 light years thick. It has a central bulge that is about 10,000 light years in diameter.
A galaxy is a group of many stars, along with gas, dust, and dark matter. The name 'galaxy' is taken from the Greek word galaxia meaning milky, a reference to our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Gravity holds galaxies together against the general expansion of the universe. In effect, the expansion of the universe takes place between groups of galaxies, not inside those groups.