Another attraction that I have always wanted to visit in Houston is the NASA Johnson Space Center. It was Saturday morning. We woke up after a pleasant night sleeping at Stephen Austin State Park. We were warned that the boy scouts might keep us awake, but we did not hear them. Heading East, we traveled through Houston and then 25 miles south to JSC.
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| Downtown Houston |
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| Downtown Houston competing with Mt Rushmore |
The Space Center has a private company that runs a visiter center and tram tour of the center. We visited three main attractions: Mission Control, the full scale mockup building, and the Saturn IV building. Mission Control had the feel of visiting the NBC television studios in NYC. As an engineer I viewed the campus as somewhat past its time in history. I wondered what it would look like if we would re-purpose NASA and all the national labs towards energy independence and high speed transportation systems. Now that would be an exciting tour.
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| Mission Control |
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| Mission control building |
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| Mobile machine shop, tough duty! |
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| Roll of duck tape on top of cabinet in full scale mockup lab |
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| Mars rovers for manned for future manned missions |
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| Full scale mockup lab |
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| Saturn IV main engine exhaust nozzle |
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| Training jets at visitors entrance |
We were glad to have visited the center, saying that we saw the control room where history was made back in 1969.
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