Vacation, part 3 (Houston Space Center)

[Well I DID say that when school started again my posts might be fewer and further between!]

After the neutral buoyancy Lab we saw the new Mission Control. This is the one you see on NASA TV and where the ground crews work on and communicate with current shuttle and station missions. We were asked not to take flash pictures because there were folks there working so I didn't get a good one to show you. We did have the chance to talk with flight director Bill Reeves and ask him some questions. He showed us a computer generated video of the Apollo moon landing that he had created with a special effects colleague that portrays the landing from the perspective of someone standing on the moon watching the lander descend. It was accompanied by the original audio from the landing. Very cool! Unfortunately the video is not available publicly, but flight director Bill did suggest that we look for it on Buzz Aldrin's website.

The vacuum chamber is where they test equipment and experiments before sending them in to space. Inside the chamber they can create a complete vacuum and adjust the temperature to the extreme highs and lows experienced in space. The chamber is a cylinder 90 feet tall and 40 feet in diameter. The door is round and is also 40 feet in diameter. That makes it a little difficult to take a picture of but we tried!

We also saw the astronaut training facility which has three or four lifesized versions of the shuttle and the living/working capsules on the space station. We weren't allowed to take pictures of any of the people who were working there. Security was very tight.

Then we saw the old mission control room which has been restored with the Apollo era equipment. We walked around and looked at all of the mission patches on the wall and then each sat down at a console while our guide told stories about the Apollo missions. Here's Tommy at a console in "the trench". It's called that because it is the lowest level of consoles which is where they used to throw the tubes with which they communicated (think drive through bank) when they were through with them which evidently reminded them of the trenches in a war where spent casings were thrown. Here are some of the mission patches from Apollo 13 and the space shuttle Challenger.

The last stop on the tour was the Saturn 5 rocket. It used to be outdoors (Tommy remembers a field full of rockets from a visit when he was about 10) but after it became clear that the weather was causing damage to it a building was built around it. It's bigger than the vacuum chamber and equally difficult to photograph but again, we tried!

We went back to our hotel room exhausted after our all day tour. But I must say that it was well worth the price of the ticket and I'd do it again at the first opportunity!