NASA

Okay so one thing about being only an hour from Houston is that we’re really close to the Johnson Space Centre. Think “Houston, we have a problem”. We drove down to the Space Centre in the morning and got there around 10:15am, just after opening. The first thing we did after buying our tickets was get in line to acquire the portable audio tours. However, there was only one girl working at the desk and she had to explain to each group how to use the device so it moved rather slowly. It probably took us about twenty minutes to get all our things and by that point, Isaac had wandered off somewhere. There was a science show playing in around 15 minutes so Dad and I decided to hang around there to see if Isaac would turn up while Mum went off and looked for

him. He showed up just on time to watch the show. I lost interest after a few minutes because it was mostly simple chemistry meant for a younger audience, so I played around with my audio tour and listened to all the extra stuff. It was cool hearing astronauts talk about their experiences in space because they’re the only ones who truly know what it’s like. I kinda want to go up in a shuttle just to experience zero-g because that part’s pretty cool if I do say so myself. The show ended with a big flourish involving liquid nitrogen, of course, and then we headed over to the theatre to watch the introductory show. The show was basically a timeline of the

history of NASA and their different spacecraft. It was very neat and it’s always shocking to see the Challenger explode, but they always show it. Then we moved through to the next room where an employee was just about to start a quick tour of the area. The room was full of space capsules, both originals and replicas. I would really not have enjoyed going into space during the early rocket days. Apparently the Mercury capsule was so cramped, the astronauts helmet literally touched the window in front of him. I said no thank you sir to that. Plus there was no possible way for him to move or go to the bathroom except into a diaper. Not enjoyable. I didn’t here much of the tour because I couldn’t get anywhere near the tour guide and everybody was talking. The room was cool to walk around though. I ended up walking in on a discussion at the end of

the tour where the guide and another scientist talked about Helium 3, an element that is everywhere on the Moon but is not produced on Earth. Apparently a small bit of Helium 3 would be able to power the entire United States of America for a full year with not waste. However, if we were to remove it from the Moon, the change in mass would screw up the tides, which is really something we don’t want to do. The solution to all our problems, just out of reach. After another quick look around, we stopped for lunch before getting on the tram tour. The tour took you to a building where astronauts do simulation training for shuttle flights to the ISS (International Space Station). It was definitely

interesting to read about all the different parts of the shuttle and to look inside it, but the building itself was really quite gross. The second stop was a warehouse-type building that houses the Saturn 5 rocket, one of the rockets used to launch the Apollo capsules during the ’70’s. On the wall behind it was a complete timeline of each Apollo mission, with all the astronauts names and ranks for each flight. When we got back to the building, we made our final stop of the day. On the side of the building is a 747 with a space shuttle piggybacking on top. This was the way that NASA would transport their shuttles from place to place during the days of shuttle flight. The 747 was bought by NASA from Boeing and then stripped and reinforced so as to be as light but as durable as possible in order to carry the shuttle. The man who had originally proposed the idea of piggybacking had to fight very hard to get his idea

realized. Nobody believed it would actually work until he physically built a scale model of the shuttle and the plane and flew them. Thus, a new method of transport was born. It was a really good idea, quite honestly. After we finished looking around the plane and the shuttle, we decided to head out, since it was getting late. We stopped quickly at the gift shop so I could get a keychain. I would have liked to get other stuff too because space it really bloody cool, but how much crap can one trailer carry, really? We had supper as soon as we got back and then the other three went off for a dip in the hot tub while I stayed in. Peace out m8s.

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