| We headed north from Galveston about 40 miles towards Houston.
There we visited the Johnson Space Centre which is where NASA controls all
the space missions including those to the moon and those using the 'Shuttle'. |  |
 | It was a fairly quiet
day but there were still 85 people on our tour of Mission Control. This is
it, the real thing, not a replica. It was empty because it was a Sunday and
because there is no current mission to manage. The screens actually show the
equivalent information for the Space Station which is managed from a similar
control centre next door. This orbits the Earth every 90 minutes and has a
Russian and an American on board at the moment. |
| The orbits are the white curves on the map and never exactly cross the same points on earth,
so probably
the lines are 90 minutes apart. The orbits are also never exactly the same
height above the earth all the time, something to do with the technicalities
of the space station being in 'free fall'. At this moment it was about 230 miles above the
earth. They measure it in nautical miles (184.9) rather than the more common
statute miles. |  |
 | You might wonder (as
we did) why they have so much liquid nitrogen. They use it to test that
components can stand the intense cold of space. |
| There are several communication dishes around although NASA
takes communication links from all over the world so that they can always be
in touch with their spacecraft. |  |
 | OK I just thought I
fancied a pin up. I'm not sure who she is because there are several female
astronauts. This is a wall sized picture as you enter the astronaut training
centre (about 25ft high). So you get a good picture... |
| The astronaut training centre has exact operational replicas of all the bits of
hardware they have to work with in space including, nowadays, all the Russian
hardware. There are actually bits from almost a dozen countries as they work
more and more on the space station. |  |
 | Centre stage is a
replica of the Shuttle, without its wings, which is a lot larger in reality than you might expect
from the pictures. They spend a lot of time practicing loading and unloading
the Shuttle. |
| This shot is of the front of the Shuttle load bay where the crane
is mounted. The other bit is used for docking the Shuttle to the space station. |  |
 | I don't think it is
fitted with real engines but the tail section is pretty massive. There are
main jets and manouevering jets. |
| The buildings don't actually look that spectacular from outside.
Many just look like simple warehouses - admittedly they are eight stories
high. |  |
 | By contrast the news organisations which live here during missions have only simple 'portacabins'
as their offices. |
| There are a couple of rockets in the park outside but these are
much smaller than the massive powerhouses now used. There is usually a
third, but it is currently being refurbished. |  |
 | Inside is one of the
Shuttle engines - just mix liquid oxygen with liquid hydrogen to make water and a 'lot' of
thrust. |
| This is the inside of a Gemini capsule, so called because it
carried two astronauts. It was the precursor to the
Apollo series of flights. It is quite difficult to work out which way the
men fitted in, but it is pretty snug in there. |  |
 | This is a telescope
module as fitted to the space station. |
| The Shuttle in launch mode with two external rocket boosters and
the external fuel tank. It was external insulation of this fuel tank which
fell off and damaged the Shuttle on the fatal flight which resulted in the
death of seven astronauts and its subsequent grounding. They have now decided that they
are better off without that bit of insulation but proving it will require
several test flights. |  |
 | This is the left hand
seat (pilot) of the Shuttle. There is a right hand seat which looked just
the same to me. But then I tried the simulator and crashed it twice, so what
do I know? |
| Inside a model of the space station are astronaut models in all
sorts of odd angles. (Since there is no gravity, there is no up or down, so
they can be anywhere.) This one is having breakfast. |  |
 | One of the dioramas
is of the moon. You can just see the earth in the background. |
| They also have an original moon rover which was used for
earth-bound training. It has four wheel drive (and steering).
They are wondering if the batteries of the one on the moon will still be okay by the time they get
back to it. |  |
 | And behind a huge
safe-like steel door is where they keep the largest exhibition of 'moon rocks'
in the world. I could bore you
with details of what this particular rock is but I didn't understand the
words either. |
| Up on the ceiling is a model of the space station. I suspect that
half the audience missed it completely. I thought the 'experience' bit was
very over-priced and very American in style, but the tour round mission
control was interesting. The shop is full of tacky things. |  |
|