Johnson Space Center - Houston

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We left our winter home in Llano Grande, Mercedes TX on March 25th for our trip to Houston; New Orleans; Memphis and Nashville. This is a side trip of approximately 1000 extra miles on our trip home to Saskatchewan. In Mercedes we left behind 100F temperatures and a lot of good friends.

Arrived at the Comfort Suites, Webster which is only minutes from the Johnson Space Center. We are using the Choice Hotel Privileges program which is now offering a free hotel every third night of your trip (providing you stay at a different hotel each night).

Previously we had purchased the VIP level 9 tickets to tour the Space Center. They only sell 12 per day. They cost $90 each compared to $12 (if you buy online) but we felt it was worth the money. There were hundreds of tourists there, waiting for trams while the 12 of us had our own van, driver and guide so we moved quickly around the area and exhibits with full commentary as we went. We had a free lunch in the staff cafeteria and the guide pointed out a few astronauts there. Highlights of the tour included the Saturn exhibit, the Natural Bouyancy Laboratory - a pool with an exact replica of the Space Station and capsules where the astronauts train in a free floating situation. The pool is 202 feet long, 102 feet wide and 40 feet deep. We saw the actual Mission Control Center where they were monitoring the Space Station. They are on their 35th mission at this time with Canadian Chris Hatfield as Commander. They are achieving many benefits for scientific and health benefits to mankind.

We toured the historic Mission Control Room where the Gemini and Apollo missions were controlled. The technology looked antiquated but was apparently a technological marvel in the 60's. The stories of the Apollo 11 which did the first lunar landing and the Apollo 13 which lost their life support module due to an explosion in the support module were spine chilling. The story is interesting if anyone wishes to read it: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/missions/apollo13. Some may remember when the news reports kept the world on edge for four days until they brought the three astronauts home. In the old Mission Control Room there is a plaque with a small mirror above the water fountain from the astronauts so that whenever a member of MC had a drink of water they would see "you brought us back".

We saw many aspects of the Shuttle Program which flew 135 missions. Some were classified missions and there were the two shuttles, Challenger and Columbia, which exploded and the crews were lost.

The new manned program is called the Orion and we saw the first two prototypes they have built. It looks like a remake of the Apollo capsule which will be pushed up by rockets as Apollo was and will splash down as Apollo capsules did. Plans are for Orion to launch in 2014 with manned flights about 2020. Most interesting was the robotic program being developed. Robots will be used to drive land rovers to obtain materials from asteroids and planets and nano robots will be launched to information and materials. We saw a prototype for the RV of the future in which crews will explore areas away from the mothership. Wow - sounds like science fiction but it's coming...

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