Day 21: Johnson Space Center

Today we went to Johnson Space Centre in Houston. It was our fist trip without Ruby. We borrowed Zabby's Jeep, which for me was a fun change from driving a big van everywhere. We followed Uncle Malcolms directions and headed towards the Space Centre. Unfortunatley we had a double whammy of directional misfortune, which made it difficult to find the place. First it seems that the road we were supposed to turn down had it's name changed from NASA Rd 1 to NASA Blvd, I guessed as much when we saw the sign, but I wasn't really sure. It didn't matter anyway, as there were road works on the exit we were supposed to take. So we got a little turned around.

I pulled into a gas station to try and use our GPS to figure out the best way to get from where we were to where we were going. It turned out to be only a mile and a half away, which was excellent. Meanwhile, Alex had jumped out of the car to do some stretching on the grass. She was standing barefoot on the grass for about 10 seconds, when I heard screaming. She had been bitten five or six times by fire ants! What luck. Luckily the pain subsided after a minute or two. I think it was mainly the shock that caused her to scream, and for a second she was convinced she needed urgent medical attention. Thankfully she didn't keel over and ruin the rest of the day.

So after the Attack of the Fire Ants, we headed towards Johnson Space Centre. After some confusion with the GPS pointing to slightly the wrong spot, we found it hidden behind some trees. The first thing we did was go on a tram tour of the facilities. We saw historic Mission Control, where the moon landings were controlled from. It looked smaller that I expected it to, but funnily enough it looked exactly as I remembered from the movie Apollo 13, which is strange. We also saw the astronaut training facilities, which include full mock-ups of space shuttles, and the international space station. The most interesting thing I saw though, was some engineers pulling apart and rebuilding a future Mars rover. The final stop on the tour was to see a Saturn V rocket on its side. That thing is massive, we couldn't even manage to fit it all into frame for a photo.

After the tram tour we looked in their museum and got to see all sorts of memorabilia, including some Gemini vehicles, and Apollo 17. It is amazing what those astronauts achieved. It would have been so scary sitting in those tin cans far above the world. The museum also had samples of moon rock, including one that we could touch (spoiler: it feels just like a rock). It was a great experience, but before long the day was over and we had to head back to Kingwood.

Ruby was there waiting for us when we returned, with a shiny new roof. I am so grateful to Uncle Malcolm for getting that repaired. It is a huge weight off my mind especially as we head into colder weather up North.