Space......The Final Frontier

Time is rolling on and our holiday comes to an end tomorrow so we thought that we would finish it on a high.  How high?  Well into orbit and beyond with a visit to the Lyndon B Johnson Space Centre, commonly know as the home of NASA.  This is specifically where human flight training, research and flight control are based.  It had been very much on our radar in 2001 but we were unable to do a full tour because after 9/11 many parts of it were closed to the public, not to reopen for some considerable time.

The best part of the visit here is the Tram Tour which takes you around the whole site stopping off at specific areas of interest.  The two that stick out are the visit to actual Mission Control and the opportunity to stand alongside a Saturn V rocket.

Mission Control, photos of which you see below, is currently concentrating activity on the planned Orion Mars mission in 2030.  However this place is shortly to take over as Control Centre for the International Space Station which today celebrated 15 years of occupation by astronauts.  They were broadcasting to the world while we were there and what was even more cool was that the son of one of the astronauts was actually visiting the Space Centre today with his junior school.  Wow!  Must be something else when you can say "my dad's an astronaut and he's currently on the International Space Station."  Beats saying, "my dad's a banker!"

As for the Saturn V rocket, well it is staggering in its size and scale.  No less than 363 feet tall - that's 58 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty - and weighing 2,950 metric tons. Probably what many people don't know is that it was developed thanks to the input of a number of German rocket engineers, the most famous being Werner Von Braun, specifically for the Apollo programme which saw men land on the moon.

We were lucky today on a number of counts - the weather was beautiful and sunny and the Space Centre was very quiet so we pretty much had free rein of the place.  It isn't a cheap place to visit and many people think it is more like an amusement park.  For me it is worth every cent to see the above displays alone.

We left NASA and headed to Kemah, a coastal town famed for its boardwalk, to enjoy lunch outdoors sitting by the sea.  What better to eat than beer battered fish and chips all washed down with a chilled glass of Sav Blanc.  A delightful way to spend part of our last day.

And so we are back in our hotel, getting ready to pack and travel North to Austin in the morning for our flight home at 1820 tomorrow evening.  Happily we are already checked into comfy seats for our flight home but there are some concerns about the fog you have there at the moment.

Will probably do one final update before we depart American soil tomorrow.