Space Camp

Not really. Ok, so Monday afternoon we got to visit our ol' college chum Christine! It was great to catch up with her after five years(!) of post-Biola life.

She also works at NASA, so we got to take a tour of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. There are lots of neat things to see there, though some may have been off-limits due to the scheduled Endeavour launch that only finally just took place.

We got to see the old Mission Control. This is the room they ran the Apollo missions from, among others. Apollo 11 told this room that the Eagle had landed, and Apollo 13 told this room that they'd had a problem. Famous!

Apollo 13 is a reminder that space flight carries inherent and grave risks. I was impressed by the many memorials in the parts of the Houston complex we visited to those who have lost their lives in the manned space program. On the right side of the room there is a collection of all of the mission patches from the missions run from the room. These patches began on the left side of the room, and then were moved over to the right side after their successful conclusion.

There are two patches that remain on the left side of this old Mission Control room: Apollo 1 and Challenger. It was sobering to see, but gives a sense of the open-ended nature of death that strikes me as appropriate.

Most of our tour we spent in the room where Christine works.

This room runs experiments on the effects of long-term space flight on the human body on the International Space Station. We were in the envious position of actually being able to talk in depth with Christine and one of her co-workers that was at work when we got there about what that involves. I was really impressed by the incredible complexity of running even this small element of a space flight.

Christine then took us by some more of the rooms that you can visit on a tour of the Space Center. We got to see the modern control room for the International Space Station. It's a little fancier than the old ones from the '60s.

After that, we visited the mock-up room. There's a room full of scale models of different spacecraft. These are used by the astronauts and engineers to plan and train missions. They have models of the space station, the new Orion module, a Soyuz capsule, and several parts of the Space Shuttle. They also have displays of new technology, a space suit, and more memorials to those lost in the space program.

One use of this module is to train for emergency egress. The far side has a worn track from where astronauts have rappelled down the side.

The last thing we got to see was Houston's Rocket Park. This is just inside the front gates of the center, and anyone can visit it during work hours. If you're ever in Houston, you should stop by and see a Saturn V.

So cool! The Saturn V is the most powerful transportation device ever built by man. It's the only rocket ever built that could take man out of earth's orbit. They have a nice display here with each of the three stages separate so that you can see the engines, and they have a Command and Service Module from Apollo (probably would have been used on 18) right in-line there, too. It gives a great sense of scale!

After that, we went out to dinner with Christine for some good old fashioned Texas barbecue. This was maybe the best part of the day, and we had a good time catching up with her.

There are lots of pictures up on Flickr.