Johnson Space Center

(Originally posted 21 April 2008)

My job now has me flying from London to Houston to support a client there. Sometimes I have to stay 2 weeks, and so when I am there over a weekend, I am always looking for things to do that interrupt my shopping excursions (I do looooooovvvvvve my shopping! And Houston has a fab DSW Shoes near the hotel I usually stay at, so I have to plan what I pack carefully so I have room for it all coming back).
First of all, I have to say that I've never been to Texas before, and so, my idea of what Texas looked like was all based on Dallas reruns and old B&W movies. This means I thought it was all either dry & dusty or a concrete jungle. But Houston isn't like that at all: it has lots of water and green spaces. The arts community is thriving and there are interesting things to do. And most often, I *don't* eat red meat, but seafood - being so close to the Gulf of Mexico, they have seafood in abundance. And the men are so nice! They will see me getting out of cab in front of the office tower and stand there holding the door open for me until I get there! Definitely DO NOT get that in Ottawa or London - or anywhere else I've been!
Anyway, the first 2 week stint I did in Houston, I went to the Johnson Space Center for the afternoon. I was amazed at how close it was. I went with a UK colleague of mine, who was very excited, because she always wanted to be an astronaut. In 20 minutes, we were out of the downtown core and driving into the JSC campus.
It never occured to me that the campus would be, well, a campus, because it doesn't actually launch rockets from there anymore. So it isn't this big empty space in the middle of no-where. It is the home of 2 major things: (1) Mission Control, and (2) the astronaut training center.
If you have little kids who dream of space, then JSC will not dissapoint, as it is really geared towards kids ages 10 and under. Why? Because NASA openly admits that it is gearing its future space program to anyone under the age of 21, and specifically at kids 10 and under. They are actively recruiting the first Mars astronauts. Most of the presentations are directed to little ones and address such pressing questions like "how does one pee in space?"
This means that sadly, if you are an adult, there are only a few things that are of real interest, but they are great things.
1. The tour of the campus. It takes you into Mission Control and the Astronaut training center, where you can see the mock ups of the Shuttle, and how they practice using the Canada Arm (they use a balloon to simulate zero gravity).
In Mission Control (yes, the real one!), you can see the tracking of any shuttle or space station activity on the screen. One interesting piece of information: The space station travels around the world 19 times in one day. So the astronauts see 19 sunrises and sunsets. This means that every minute of their time in space is pre-determined before they even leave Earth. They revert to "space time" which dictates when they eat, exercise, go to sleep or get up, because it has no bearing on earth time.
Think about that.....space isn't so free....
If you go on a weekday, you can sign up for the level 9 tour, which takes you on the same tour, but in more detail, and also areas that are not part of the general tour. Sadly, it doesn't run weekends, so my colleague & I had to the general tour. The general tour lasts about 1.5 hours; the level 9 tour lasts about 4 hours, and they don't allow anyone under the age of 14. Plus, you have to sign up at least a week in advance and submit to security screening.
2. The Saturn V rocket building. This building holds the last Saturn V rocket. Now, I get it that rockets are big....but to be standing next to one is truly awe inspiring, and it gives you new appreciation that we ever get anything off the ground at all.
Saturn V rockets are the Moon rockets - the ones that took astronauts to the moon and back, so they are very important in the hoistory of American space exploration.
You get the Saturn V rocket building as the last stop on the general tour.
http://www.nasm.si.edu/exhibitions/GAL114/SpaceRace/sec300/sec384.htm
3. The Space Exploration throughout the ages exhibit has artifacts and models of the history of space exploration. It's pretty interesting to see how far exploration has come....
the NASA shop was fun, too. I particularly liked the t-shirts and ball caps that said: "It's not rocket science. ..................Oh, wait....yes it is!" Makes me laugh each time I think of the expression.
I'll post some photos another time.