I visited Houston in December 2012 but the weather was wet, cold and windy and I did not visit Space Center Houston since much of the tour is outside. Today the weather was perfect – sunny and warm with low humidity – so the space center was my destination for the day.

I have visited the  Kennedy Space Center in Florida many times on our 10th grade Florida trip but Space Center Houston is the gateway to NASA’s Johnson Space Center which is different because it is active every day, not just for launches. It is here that a lot of the design work is done for planning future missions, it has been the mission control center since the start of the US space program and a lot of the astronaut training is done here. On a 90 minute tram tour we saw the actual mission control room for all Gemini, Apollo and Space Shuttle missions, the mock-up lab where replicas of every section of current and future spacecraft are used to prepare astronauts for missions and the incredible Saturn V rocket that was used for the moon missions.

In addition to the tour of the NASA facilities there are many displays and simulators and the newest one is the Space Shuttle mounted on the Boeing 747 that was used to transport shuttles. You can go inside both vehicles and I found the 747 history, modifications and displays to be very interesting. Afterwards I drove to Lake Charles, Louisiana for the night. The map and video, which contains an excellent view of the shuttle and 747, are here.

This is the mission control center that was used until the shuttle fleet was retired. It has been restored, with all original equipment, to the way it was in 1965. There was not one computer here then.

The next two photos show the mock-up lab which, among many things, contains fully functioning replicas of every part of the International Space Station (ISS). The first picture shows the main ISS module and, in the foreground, the top of the Soyuz spacecraft currently used to get astronauts to and from the ISS.The full size replica of the ISS “arm” that is used to assemble parts of the ISS and to launch satellites among other tasks.

The Saturn V rocket is huge. The best way to see the scale is to compare with the person halfway along the rocket, near the railing.
The Space Shuttle replica, Independence, and the Boeing 747 that was modified to carry shuttles. You can see the supports added to the plane on the outside but, inside, there are all sorts of modifications to lighten and reinforce it.