NASA - The Johnson Space Centre

Part of the reason we hired a car in Houston was to get ourselves to the NASA Johnson Space Centre. The freeway was not too crowded early on on a Saturday morning for the 35 minute journey. I had booked tickets for the tram tour on-line, but I need not have worried as there was plenty of room. The first tour to Mission Control took us to that very familiar room from the 60's and 70's space programme. The most impressive part of the tour was the Saturn 5 rocket lying on its side . What an awesome piece of engineering. What amazing power to lift it all off the ground. It is incredible how much rocket was required to lift a relatively small capsule into space.

Mission Control at Johnson Space Centre, Houston

Saturn 5 rocket at NASA

Back at the main museum we walked through the Space Shuttle which is mounted on its 747 transport plane. A huge difference in the amount of usable room compared to the Apollo programmes.

Space Shuttle on its 747 Transport

Back in the museum we looked at the interesting displays, which included a piece of moon rock, which you could touch. It it well touched.

Lynda touching a piece of rock from the moon.

After lunch we caught the second tram tour to the engineering workshop where they have the mock-ups of space craft fore Astronauts to train in. These include the international space station which is part of the current programme and the mock up for the next space mission which will see manned trips to the moon and to Mars.

It was very very hot outside. On the way home we called in to a pharmacy and bought two large packs of 24 bottles of water. This was a good move as it met our needs for the whole time we were in Houston. The tap water tasted a bit like a chemical factory.

Matthew had told Aimee that she needed to eat barbecue in Texas. A Google search revealed that there was a place not too far away. We got a bit lost on the way and walked a lot further than we needed to or wanted to in the heat, but the ribs were worth it. They were massive and very very tasty. Three ribs was more than enough. The walk back was much easier because we now knew the shortest route.

It had been a very good day. NASA was especially interesting.