Sonya's Blog - Day 235 - NASA

Sonya’s Blog - Day 235 - February 12th - NASA

We are off to the NASA Space Centre, which is just outside of Houston. We have been to the NASA Space Centre in Port Canaveral, so we want to check out this one. First we had to get ready, get lunches packed, make sure Kizmet is well taken care of. I would like to be out by 9 AM, so that we can get to the Space Centre for opening at 10 AM.

Well, we were doing pretty good until we started chatting with other campers. I took Kizmet for her final walk of the morning and one of the nearby neighbours saw me, he came out and asked me, “How’s Alberta doing this morning?” Then he explained that they had been on the Shuttle with us in New Orleans on one of the days, and they did not get a chance to talk to us, but heard us talking to another lady. So they pretty much knew our whole story. They are from Stetter, Alberta and are one a year trip, as well. They left in September and are heading to Houston on Sunday to catch a cruise. They have friends that flew down to meet them and are joining them on the cruise. We had a good conversation about our trips. When I got back Blake was talking to our immediate neighbours and the other couple with Pico the chihuahua. We finally got in the truck, but it was 9:30. Ah well.

NASA is about a 1/2 hour drive away and there was no traffic, so we got there pretty quickly. By the time we parked and got into the Space Centre it was 10:30. There was a science show at 11 that Isaac wanted to see, so the kids just explored the main exhibit hall while Blake and I waited in line to get the audio tour. You can choose to look through the museum with or without the audio tour, but we chose the audio tour to get the full experience. It took a really long time to get our audio tour devices, so that was a little annoying. There was a couple of ladies in front of me from Québec that I was chatting with to pass the time.

We finally got our headsets and it was almost time for the 11 AM show. We went and sat down and figured out our audio tours while we waited for the show to start. The show was really good, it was all about how space is a vacuum and what would happen if you went up there without a pressurized suit. She used balloons and marshmallows to demonstrate her points. Isaac was one of her volunteers.

We then went to the gallery, which is all about the history of space travel. It started with a movie and then we had a tour guide take us through the gallery. They had the original space capsules hanging in the gallery, from the first space flights. The first manned flights into space, on the Mercury Rockets, were basically nuclear rockets with the warhead removed and a capsule put in the warheads place. They had very tight quarters and only one astronaut could ride in the capsule. It was so tight, his head was pressing against the instrument panels.The tour ended at a chalkboard, where NASA scientists wrote down their theories and equations. The tour guide talked about Helium 3, which is in abundance on the moon, but not on earth. If we could access Helium 3, a very small load could power the whole of the United States for one year without any waste. The problem is, that we cannot harvest soil off the moon, because it might affect the rotation of the moon and, therefore, the earth’s tides and who knows what other consequences. Right at the end of the tour, one of the retired NASA scientists joined us. He volunteers at the Space Centre every Friday and he gave us some insight into working at NASA during it’s heyday and through all the budget cuts. It was interesting.

We then looked around the rest of the gallery on our own. Our growing boy was getting hungry, so we then had to take a break for lunch.

After lunch we went on the Tram tour. The tram tour was our favourite part of the Space Centre in Florida, so we were looking forward to this. Well, this was was not as good, mostly because there are no launch pads in Houston and that was what was interesting in Florida. We did stop at one building and go in for a look around. This was set up as a simulation training centre for the Space Shuttle missions. So they had a mock control room and a mock shuttle that you could walk through. It was really cool, but I think that NASA could do a better job of cleaning the place up. It was really dusty and right before you head back downstairs, there is a low wall that was just covered with dead bugs and something that looked suspiciously like rat feces. Yummy!

The rest of the tram tour was pretty boring, there was this building and that building, etc. etc. They sure have a lot of buildings with large parking lots, which were all half empty. Budget cuts, budget cuts, budget cuts. There was a family behind us on the tram from Hong Kong and they couldn’t get over all the parking lots and how much space it took up. I guess you would never see that in Hong Kong, they took a lot of pictures of the parking lots! Our last stop was to look at the Saturn 5 rocket, which was the rocket used on the Apollo missions. These are the largest rockets ever built. It is a whole building, dedicated to preserving this rocket. It used to be outside, but the metal was eroding quickly so they had to put it in a building. Here are some pictures:

There was also a whole wall that had pictures and details about each Apollo flight, which was interesting to read.

We then got back on the tram and went back to explore the main exhibit areas some more. When you walk up to the Space Centre, the first thing you see is a huge 747 with a space shuttle piggy backed on top of it. It is the Independence Space Shuttle and the 747 that was used to ferry the Space Shuttle across the country when needed. We went to check this out. There are four levels for you to explore. We took the elevator to the top floor and started on the flight deck of the Space Shuttle. The next floor down is the main cargo hold of the Space Shuttle. Then you explore the 747, which was specifically outfitted so that it could carry the Space Shuttle. There is a lot of reinforcements on the fuselage. There were a lot of short videos showing how the idea of using a 747 came about and the developments that lead to it’s implementation. It was pretty cool, plus the pictures are very awesome.

On the flight deck of Independence:

The model that was built to prove that a 747 could carry the shuttle. This flies and we saw videos of the demo flights:

Inside the retro-fitted 747:

The full view, pretty amazing:

It was neat to have the audio tour while we were at the museum. It help to augment everything we were looking at. It was neat to also hear the stories of some of the people that worked at NASA and some of the astronauts.

It was getting pretty late in the day by this time, so we needed to head back to take care of Kizmet. The kids got a couple of souvenirs from the gift shop and we called it a day.

We had supper and then Blake, Isaac and I headed to the hot tub. We had it all to ourselves again, so that was pretty perfect.

Sonya