Johnson Space Center

Don Baer

Moderator
Staff member
This past August the wife and I drove from Arizona to the Florida Panhandle to visit my oldest Son who is stationed at Eglin Air force base along the way and also way home we did a lot of site seeing and one of the stops was the Johnson Space Center outside of Houston. This is where a lot of the astronaut training is done as well as research for future missions in space.The tours take you around and there is a lot to see well worth the trip. Also where Mission control is.


0812160959_HDR.jpg
The 747 Mother ship with the Shuttle Independence are parked at the visitors center. Much to my regrets we didn't have time to tour them but they are availabe for you to go on and tour.
0812161043.jpg
Houston we have a problem. Mission Control
0812161049.jpg
When they did the movie Apollo 13 the movie producers duplicated this room
0812161049b.jpg
Although no longer used you can see that this mission control was used for a lot of mission.I the second picture in the top corner you can see a screen showing the new mission control on closed circuit TV.

0812161146.jpg

This is the simulator for the space station that is used for training the astronauts

0812161146a.jpg

soyuz simulator the Soviet vehicle used to transport astronauts .

0812161149.jpg

Orion this is the simulator for the Orion which will be used to travel to Mars the mission is slated to begin in 2020
 
Yup thats another even cooler place to visit. I visited there with my kids back in around 1999.
Standing in that control room was a special moment for me.
It was a bucket list item for me. I have not yet stopped marveling at the whole space exploration thing. I take none of it for granted.
It captured my imagination when i was a tot and listened to Neil Armstrong on the radio in SA live during the landing saying "one small step etc" . I get goosebumps thinking back to those days.
Looks like i need another visit they have added a bunch since i was there.
As a tribute when i purchased my Dart Catamaran with my sailing buddy , we named her Challenger after the Space Shuttle.

This was where my kids first came across space dots....icecream balls. Thats what they were calling them back then. Lol.

But to stand under one of those Saturn V rocket engines man oh man if you have an engineering bone in you, you gotta be in pure awe.
Yeah there are some cool places to visit if you have a curious mind.

LOTS to be very proud of if you American. Don't have much from place i came from except grief. At least now i can be proud of Canada Arm. ;)


USS Entrepid in NY is another out Allens way.
 
I lived in Houston area for 25 years and never went down to the space center.... Matter of fact, I stayed out of Houston proper as much as I could... I worked in and around the International airport and later around the ship channel and only went downtown to the Customs office when I absolutely had to.
 
Top