Rockets, moon rocks and a lazy day

2/20/2014 Thursday. We ventured into the past, into a time when the Reds were Cold and the the US was hot and they were racing to space. Kennedy made a fiery speech at Rice University propelling us into the Race. From there it was Geminis and Saturns and Shuttle crafts of discover. So all that to say we went to Johnson Space Center and took the tour and went to the museum.

They are restoring a shuttle in the parking lot. It was neat to see it apart and see the structure of the inside of the wings. What a fragile looking thing. I always thought that everything we sent into space looked like it was made from baling wire and aluminum foil. This shuttle is going to sit on the back of the a Boeing 747 that NASA used to transport the shuttle after landings back to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The whole thing will be infront of the museum and one will be able to climb stairs to view the interior of both vehicles.

Mission Control for all the manned space flights. The computing power of the computers beneath the floor of control was 4 megabites, the computing power of your digital wrist watch. I learned from a guy who used to work there that they would write telemetry data on clear sheets and paste the sheets to the monitors.

  Inside the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility. The first pictures are of the full size International Space Station. The third picture is of the Soyuz Capsule that the Russians send three people into outer space to dock with the ISS. The capsule looked like you could squeeze one fat dude in (or one Shawn Campbell) and be done. It wasn't very big.
Pic 4 is of some of the vehicles that NASA is working with for exploration. The robot man can use an Ipad with his deft touch and flip the pages of a book without tearing them. At the end of the tour I wanted to ask where the studio was where they recorded the moon landings was at but I thought I might get punched in the mouth. For all you history buffs back home in Ohio, Niel Armstrong was in the Upper Sandusky Boy Scout chapter.

One of only three Saturn V rockets in existence and this is the most complete one. It is big and the capsules are small.

Random acts of photographic senselessness. The command center is a National Historic Heritage Site. Even though they had ashtrays on the backs of the seats, they wouldn't let me smoke. We rode a tram. I shaved off the beard and am looking quite bare. There is a guy at JSC who loves Star Trek and restored this shuttle craft to all its none working glory.

2/20/2014 Friday. Slept late and had beautiful sunshine all day. Cool at 68 with a light wind but still better than Ohio. Did some odd job work on the trailer and Patrick worked on school work. Nice to have a day where we don't have to worry about schedules or packing lunches, just lounging and catching up. Tomorrow we ride for San Antonio.