Houston Space Center

Today we drove to Houston to visit the Space Center.  What a cool place!  We started with the Tram Tour which took us to Building 30 which houses Mission Control, followed by the Astronaut Training Facility and the Rocket Garden which holds a refurbished Saturn V rocket now housed in a new building.

We had to climb 87 steps to see the historic Mission Control which has been preserved with all its original equipment - not a computer in sight!  It ran all Gemini and Apollo missions and Space Shuttle missions from 1981 to 1992. It was a neat feeling to see the place where so much space history happened, from the Apollo 11 Moon Landings to the Apollo 13 near disaster to the early space shuttle mission.

Our next stop was the Astronaut Training Facility which contains mock ups of all International Space Station (ISS) modules to orient future astronauts to their layout and equipment. Here's a picture of most of the U.S modules.  Also present are the Russian modules, a space shuttle mock up, and the new Orion and SpaceX Dragon crafts.  It also contained a robotics lab where various robotic equipment can be run through an obstacle course.

With all that, the Space Center opened a brand new exhibit last Saturday - the Independence Shuttle mounted on one of the two shuttle transport crafts - a modified Boeing 747. Here's a distance shot of both and a close up nose shot of the two craft hooked together.  The nice thing is that, unlike seeing the three shuttles that actually flew into space that are no-touch exhibits, on this craft (which came from the Florida Space Center), you can walk through this shuttle and the carrier aircraft!  That was very special.

So now we are in Houston with only our drive to Dallas and our flight home in front of us tomorrow.