NASA

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Geo: 29.7605, -95.3698

My brain is tired.

Today we spent 7 hours at the Johnson Space Center and now my brain is tired. I won't even attempt to describe all we did and all we learned but I assure you - it was an interesting, educational and inspirational day!

After walking past the space shuttle, the REAL space shuttle (!) and realizing Jeff had forgotten to put the recharged battery back into the camera (oops), we entered the building.

Yikes! The noise level was incredible - there were kids everywhere - ah...Spring Break!
This area was definitely geared to children - the brightly colored "Angry Birds" marquee was one of the clues that drew me to this conclusion...that and the Ripley's Believe It or Not" area.
I admit to being a little concerned about our day, but it was great.

We made our way to the welcome counter to pick up maps and audio tour headsets and started off. As mentioned earlier, I can't recount everything we saw and did so here are some highlights.

We attended a talk by Dr. John-David Bartoe who is a retired astronaut. Dr. Bartoe flew on 'Space Shuttle Mission 51-F Challenger, SpaceLab 2'. He was engaging and told good stories of traveling and life in space. Our takeaway from his talk, and this made us both drop our jaws, was regarding the Orion mission to Mars. It will take approximately 9 months for the astronauts to reach Mars, BUT there is work being done on a plasma-propulsion engine, and if that work is completed and tested in time, that system might be used with Orion. That would reduce the travel time to 39 DAYS!! The things you learn on vacation.

We walked and walked in the Starship Gallery exhibit. There were many artifacts including Mercury, Gemini and Apollo capsules that had been flown into space. The inside of those capsules were smaller than I imagined. Astronauts could never be claustrophobic - there goes my second career choice. The Starship Gallery also had moon rocks on exhibit protected carefully in nitrogen boxes to keep them from being exposed to the Earth's atmosphere. There was even a moon rock to touch - and we did.

We were tired after seeing all the neat stuff and, in my case, reading all the descriptive plaques, so we stopped in the Zero-G diner to eat our snacks. We had brought carrot and celery sticks, bottles of water, oranges and a cookie each for lunch. Surrounded by pizzas, burgers, fries, hot dogs and all manner of fried chicken, after we ate we perused the menu boards. Only ONE place, Starbucks, had salads. They had two - one with meat, one vegetarian. Other than that nothing fresh was offered...I was (and still am) appalled.

Having had enough walking for a bit, we lined up to take a Tram Tour. We chose the blue tour as it visited the new Mission Control center and Rocket Park. I was excited to go to Mission Control. Our tram stopped along the way at a memorial grove, a stand of oak trees planted in memory of those astronauts who have died in the line of duty - the three Apollo I and seven Challenger astronauts.

Mission Control was very cool and looks nothing like the old Mission Control that I remember with it's long tables. The new Mission Control has been designed specifically for the Orion mission and the old Center will be redone in the same way. We did have a speaker here but what he talked about is a blur, except he did mention that for the first time in years and only for a short time would NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Lab be open to the public. I got super excited and Jeff and I hoped to take that tour later.

Back to the tram, our next stop was Rocket Park. There were various rockets from throughout the history of the space program and seeing the development of the past 60 years was astounding. Those early astronauts really were pioneers. The highlight of this area was the Saturn V rocket. There are some photos below. It was called the Saturn V because it had 5 engines (huge!). This is the rocket that we'd see at lift off...remember? It would lift off and after a few minutes the bottom 5 engines would drop away, then a little after that the booster engines would fall back to Earth. The sole purpose of this 3-stage rocket was to propel the small capsule with the astronauts out of Earth's gravity and into outer space. The thing was ginormous.

When we returned to the Space Center we quickly found the tour to the Neutral Buoyancy Lab. For those of you who don't know this is the astronauts' pool. Since a tour had left right before we got there we had an hour to wait so we walked around the Astronaut Gallery which is the world's most comprehensive collection of spacesuits. Here again the changes in technology, fabrics, communications, etc was evident. It is hard to imagine being able to DO anything in those suits ...which leads us back to the Neutral Buoyancy Lab.

This tour was not on one of the little open trams but we boarded a large tour bus. It was a 25 minute ride to the lab but well worth it. Astronauts don their spacesuits and work underwater learning to move around, handle tools, make repairs, etc in a neutral buoyancy environment. It isn't like the weightlessness they will experience in space, but it is a better learning environment than land because buoyancy offsets the force of gravity. An astronaut who is neutrally buoyant will neither float nor sink. (I hope you are impressed that I remember this from my SCUBA instructor training. LOL)
I was interested in learning that every astronaut is accompanied by two scuba divers for safety reasons. I imagine that this could lead to a crowded pool - except this pool is huge! 202 feet long, 102 feet wide and 40 feet deep the pool holds 6.2 million gallons of water. There are mock ups of parts of the International Space Station submerged in it for astronaut training.
This was a wonderful experience and I wish we had more time here.

Our bus ride back to the Space Center was fast as we entertained by Rowan and his little brother. They announced that we were very fun to talk to and quite frankly they were pretty fun as well. Rowan, his siblings and parents live on a boat "a catamaran, to be exact" the youngest told us. They are home schooled and challenged us to name an animal for which they would give us 2 facts about that animal. I started off with a warthog and they were not stumped. Jeff suggested roast beef and they erupted. I was sorry to get off the bus.

So, NOW can you see why my brain is tired? Not to mention my feet?

When we got back to the hotel we had our yummy salads that we had purchased from Kroger. Then, feeling like a slug, I left Jeff to read in our room and I walked on the treadmill for 90 minutes.

Whatever happened to relaxing on the beach and drinking margaritas?? Tomorrow we've decided will be our relaxing day as it is supposed to rain.
Bye bye for now

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Comments

[Bernie]

You should hire a motorbike .