Houston 2016

[Greg]

Holy Fuck!

I'm taking my father to another Serra convention. We flew out Thursday morning.

Yes, I flew in the middle seat. Or most of the middle seat. My father took up at least a third of mine. It's hard to hold a book when the passenger sitting next to you has his elbow jammed in your chest.

Yes, I yelled at the ticket agents. Yes, I called another United helper a moron because she sent me to the wrong ticket agent. My father's ticket requires special care because he flies with an oxygen concentrator. You have to talk to a human to get his ticket. United hasn't decided which person that should be. During the last three trips I have gone to three different locations. None of them knew what the hell they were supposed to do. Today, I browbeat the woman until she gave me the tickets. I am through playing. Okay, maybe I started out the day angry because my mother descended to the kitchen ten minutes before our departure with a list of chores to be completed.

And maybe I'm angry (no maybe about it) because my father's pants were less than fresh smelling. Thankfully they smelled worse in the car than they did on the plane.

We did get to ride the cart through Houston international which was entertaining. And the hotel is in the airport so we got to take a small train from baggage claim to the hotel, where they had lost my room reservation. for a minute I thought my father had booked us into the same room. That horror show wasn't going to happen. I couldn't imagine spending three nights in the same room as my father. But the Marriot had screwed up. My father had booked two rooms. The Marriot people had just lost any mention of my room. It took them about twenty minutes to find me a room that was available. The desk clerk was very complimentary about how calm I was being. I told him I had shot my anger wad in San Francisco at some United clerk. (We had a similar room screw up in Washington. I'm just going to blame my father.

Since my room overlooks the United Terminal for the airport, I'm going to spend the rest of the evening mooning the planes.

Tomorrow, I ditch my father for a tour of the Johnson Space Center.

[Greg]

So, I rented a car and drove to Space Center Houston, the gateway drug for Johnson Space Center. I got to rent a lovely Jeep SUV for the drive. When I asked for directions on how to get to a certain freeway, I was told Left right left right. Thanks, buddy, you've been a big help.

I'm thinking I need to do a Kickstarter to get Houston a few hills, because, man, is this place flat.

If I had come next week, I could have gotten into the plane that flew the shuttles around the country. They even had a shuttle simulator on top of the 747. Looking at the ongoing construction for the new exhibit, all I could think was they sure had a lot to do if they were going to open in seven days.

My first impression of Space Center Houston was that it was a bit cheesey. Right inside the door is the angry birds exhibit, for instance. But my fellow school children really enjoyed it. There was a place where you can see the interior of a space shuttle cockpit. They had lots of uniforms that astronauts had worn on various mission. There was a wall of photographs from every space mission, as well. But I didn't get the feel of authenticity from everything. It was more like an amusement park rather than a visit to one of our premiere scientific achievements.

I had signed up for the 12 person VIP tour of the Johnson Space Center. I did feel pretty cool when they gave me the VIP badge and told me to keep it on at all times. We were going to spend the next five hours driving around the facility. Woohoo. At this point, I still wasn't feeling the NASA aura.

Our first stop was the huge Vehicle Mock Up facility. We got to roam the floor looking at the Mock ups for the Orion Capsule, the Soyuz escape pod, and the ISS. This is the spot where the astronauts come to train on simulations of the interiors of the spacecraft. Best part of this room was looking at the glass enclosed gallery above our heads where the tram tour people got to see the facility. Spend the money, people.

Fun Facts. The land Johnson Center sits on is leased to the government for $1 a year by Rice university. The only stipulation for the lease was that all the buildings had to look like a college campus. At the time, Rice didn't have much faith in NASA and wanted to be ready to turn it into more of their own campus should NASA fail. There is also a herd of about 3000 deer on the 1600 acre property. We saw a lot of them.

The next stop was the pool where the astronauts get to simulate weightlessness while working on the ISS. This isn't a stop on the Tram tour since it is five miles away from the Center. It used to be you could go right next to the pool but because of a bad apple, the tour is now confined to an elevated gallery. I asked our guide for the address of the bad apple so we could write him hateful letters.

I spent a lot of time being mean to our guide. At the very start he told us he wanted us to laugh at his many upcoming jokes. I told him to make them funny.

Still wasn't feeling the coolness vibe. Everything was fascinating but I wasn't getting the wow factor I hoped to get.

After a stop for a lunch, paid for by the tour, that all changed. We went to the mission control building. Because our tour was ahead of schedule, our guide promised to take us into 4 of the mission control rooms rather than the normal 2. Our guide Kevin was a bit out of sorts with us or maybe we were just making his job easier. He kept asking if we new about NASA programs and craft and we kept saying we did.

Mission Control had the tightest regulations. The biggest being no one gets to bring any bags into the building. There were signs saying we were being monitored at all times. Take as many pictures as you want, but no flash photography. Our first Mission control was a quick peak in at the back-up mission control for the ISS Mission Control. Take some snaps and get out. Basically they have a glassed in gallery overlooking the main room with theater seating. For the people down below, it must be like being in a zoo.

Our second stop was ISS Mission Control where we got to see live feeds from the Space Station as well as seeing all the stations I usually see on NASA TV. At this point, the drift to being wowed began. I really like watching NASA TV and was thrilled to see where they controlled the space Station. Our guide, Kevin, told us the responsibilities for each station. He even told us about the mascots or mementos each station had. For instance one station has a baseball bat. There is an hourglass above another. He never did tells us why there a broken AMC gremlin on one of them. One station is basically the food station and is covered in donuts and pastries for the mission control workers. I could have spent the rest of the day in that room.

Glad I didn't. Our next stop was the Mission Control they used for all the Apollo Missions. Rather than going into the gallery at the back of the room, a guide from the other level 9 tour took us into the actual control room. We got sit in the chair for flight control. See the speaker where the words "The Eagle has landed" and "Houston, we have a problem" were broadcast. Holy Crap, that was fun. I took a lot of pictures. This room also had a gallery at he back and we got to see other groups, green with envy I'm sure, behind us.

Our guide for this portion, who worked as a tech at NASA for many years and a recipient of a silver snoopy, told us tales of pretty much every launch and gave us some behind the scenes dirt on working for NASA. He won his silver snoopy for coming up with a solution to keep Skylab functioning after it lost one of it's solar arrays during launch.

Again, could have spent the entire day in there.

Our final Mission Control was the future of launches at Johnson. Originally, it was the room where they did all the Shuttle launches. All the shuttle launch emblems adorn the walls. But now it is being reconfigured to guide our next launches into space including the trip to the mars.

At this point I'm on overload with NASA geekery.

Our final stop was the Saturn V building where they have the most complete Saturn V rocket. I think this was the one that was going to be used for Apollo 18 before the funds were cut for anymore Moon landings. Cindi and I saw one of these in Florida and I couldn't tell how this one was more complete than that one. Still cool. Still very big.

And then, we were done. This entire time I was fighting the battery drain on my cel phone as I took and uploaded multiple selfies. I did have the Nikon but nothing says look at me like the Selfie. But the camera and I made it through.