"Houston, we have a problem" (er, no we don't, I just always wanted to say that!)

The tour starts here


We're getting itchy to hit the road again. The weather here has been nice, and 2 days ago, it got up into the high 70's, with the humidity level just a little higher! Yesterday it was much cooler, and today was supposed to be just about right! We decided it was time for a little diversion, so we headed down to Houston for the day. First stop - the Space Center! We got there about 10:50am, and found out that the 90 minute tram tour started at 11:00am! Good timing...the tour was excellent!

First stop on the tour - Mission Control!

This is the actual Mission Control used to put a man on the moon. All of those terminals are just that - TV sets that provided real-time data to the engineers. These are not computers - there are no keyboards. The computer feeding the data occupied a room a few floors down (and it's capacity was 300kb!). There are now 2 other mission control rooms with updated equipment, but this is the original one.

The Apollo Building

The building in the background houses a left-over, never used Apollo spacecraft. It had been built, but never was launched, as funding for the program ended. It sat on a field for 23 years (!) before funding was allocated to preserve it as an historical landmark. Amazingly, the building was build around it at a cost of $1.5M.

The Apollo inside the building, with all stages, is 332' long

I can't remember the exact numbers, but I think they said that, during takeoff, the first stage burned 1-1/2 tons of fuel per second - and the first stage lasts 50 seconds!!

Space Shuttle simulator

This dashboard is almost as complicated as our motorhome!