Houston, we have NO problems

Full scale mock-ups of everything


Standing in front of a door to a "vacuum thermal test chamber"


Brenda taking over the historic control room [She's the one in black ;-)]




Holy rocket ship Batman, the Johnson Space Center in Houston is one huge facility. We spent the entire day there (except for maybe that time spent drinking beer and eating 50¢ oysters…..fresh off the boat……..and …….they were great). The Houston facility is NASA’s central brain where most of the projects are dreamt up, prototyped, and tested. And man do they test!! Several years ago, we visited the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, from where all flights are launched but, it is from Houston that they are controlled.

We were uniquely fortunate that a Space Shuttle flight (STS116) was “in the air” and docked with the International Space Station (ISS). We were able to visit both active control rooms (one for the shuttle; one for the space station). Unfortunately no pictures allowed however, it was a thrill to see the actual minute by minute control of a live mission. One of the astronauts on the ISS was attempting to replace a carbon filter on a water system and was seen and heard to say “This Alpha Tango blah blah thing is sticky. Ok if I use a bigger wrench?” High tech indeed!! The CAPCOM in Houston said “Sure go ahead”. Fortunately it came unstuck. I fear a big hammer might have been used next. We also watched as the ISS astronauts set a new world record for a Frisbee toss. I can’t help but think that a weightless environment might be cheating!! I guess it’s not all work.

Pictures were allowed in what they call the “historic control room”, from where all flights up to 1997 were controlled and, in all other facilities. Astronauts were practicing space station construction in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL), a huge swimming pool 100 x 200 x 40 feet deep and, at the other end of the pool; they were already developing techniques for the next moon mission in 2020. I may have overdone it on the picture taking but what the heck, I am a bit of a tech geek!