“HOUSTON, WE HAVE A DAG DANCER UP HERE”

26 May 2013: Day 12 of 43 – Houston TEXAS.
Overnight in New Orleans LOUISIANA (State 6).
Today 687km, Total 5,282km. 

We arrived in Houston at around 4:30pm on 25 May 2013 and by 7:30pm we were all sitting in a hug two storey Vietnamese restaurant only 3km form the centre of Houston CBD. Houston is the fourth biggest city in the USA with 8 million. Many of these are Spanish, Czech and Vietnamese. Houston is also well known for its many museums, churches and non-American foodie restaurants. He food we had was great but more towards Chinese style with thicker, richer sauces than the equivalent in Australia. It was great to see the sun the next day with huge puffy clouds that is typical of the Gulf area. By 8am we were cruising around top-down in the centre of Houston CBD admiring the many glass towers, large city blocks, extremely long straight roads and a great tram line down the middle. Downtown Houston is very squish and clean and the CBD is surrounded by a large medical and university precinct that is also highly manicured. This is no oil city. It was obvious by the many museums and churches that there was more going on here. On our way to Space Center, 33km away we drove through some suburbs of Houston to get an idea of broader metro area. The area we chose had a mix of nice stand-alone, big-block houses but most were smaller un-kept cladded houses with some apartments that looked like commission homes. We concluded that it must have been a nice area a long time ago that turned bad.

The “Space Center Houston”, also known as the “Johnson Space Center” after Lyndon B is a sprawling complex half-way between CBD Houston and the Gulf of Mexico. This is “Mission Control” or the place that tracks and manages all in-flight missions from the start of the Space Program to now. 

There are no launches here – these are all at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in Florida, about 60km west of Orlando on the Atlantic Coast. Reason for this being better weather and for safety since an explosion could damage mission control and risk anyone or anything already in space. The set up at Space Center Houston is terrific. There is a huge museum that is more like a Disney Theme Park for adults and children and you get on a tram that takes you out to the real centre to see the old Mission Control (used in all missions up to 1995, especially Apollo) and  huge hanger housing a real Saturn V rocket used as a prototype.

The old Mission Control is just as you see it in the Ron Howard movie “Apollo 13” starring Tom Hanks as Jim Lovell – apparently many shots where here in the real center. All of us were awe-struck. In front of us was the actual room that landed 12 men on the surface of the moon and returned three that almost perished. We saw footage of the real Gene Kranz (Apollo Flight Director – played by Ed Harris in the Apollo 13 movie) and marvelled at all the original 1950’s and 1960’s electronic equipment. It even smelt old and scholarly! This Mission Control was declared a National US Monument in 1995 and a new control room established in the same building “45 North” to manage the Space Shuttle and International Space Center missions, the later still happening today.

A short tram ride away was the colossal hanger housing a horizontally laid “Saturn V” rocket used in all Apollo missions. Each stage of the rocket is separated so you can see in the tops and bottoms of each. The Command Module (45 tons, that accommodated the astronauts) displayed was the actual one used and recovered in the last moon Landing of Apollo 17. The most impressive part are the five main engines in the first stage (hence the V or 5 in the name) that are responsible for lifting this 2,000 ton rocket, 41 miles (66km) straight up (space starts at 100km) to a speed of 10,000km/h!!! It does this by producing a total of 7 million pounds thrust – a fully laden 747-400 (356 tons) uses 240,000 pounds thrust to take off… 

Another 2 stages are required to get the astronauts free of the earth’s pull and travelling to the moon at 35,000km/h. Amazing feat for 1969! Back at the Disney Museum I was fortunate to see several actual moon rocks and even touch one – only 8 moon rocks around the world can be touched and have been carbon dated to 3.5 billion years old. You will have to wait for the film to see this highlight. We all then met at a special theatrette to experience that actual noise and rumble of a Space Shuttle launch – you can feel your rib cage and belly vibrate – fabulous. Then it was another 25min to get the latest updates on the current “Curiosity” Mars Mission, a big 1 ton remote control vehicle which has been on Mars since the start of 2011. Just recently it discovered shale and drilled and analysed some Marsian rock which both prove that water once flowed on Mars. This is the first of the two principle objectives achieved. The second is to explore for chemical evidence of the ingredients required to sustain micro-biotic life on the red planet. They are funded for a further two years to achieve this. By 1pm we said farewell y'all to this amazing center and Texas bound for New Orleans some 5.5hrs drive away.