1 February 2019 Johnson Space Center

We got up and moving this morning and got on the road before noon. It took an hour to drive around Houston to the Johnson Space Center. Walking up to the Houston Space Visitor Center you can see Space Shuttle Enterprise mounted on top of the NASA 502 747 carrier aircraft. It’s a pretty impressive sight. Walking into the visitor center, we were amazed to see all the displays. Our first priority was to get on the tour of Johnson Space Center. The way to the first stop, we found out the Johnson Space Center is a wildlife sanctuary (We saw lots of deer on the tour). They also have an impressive Texas Longhorn herd. The first stop was the mission control center. They have five mission control rooms at Johnson Space Center. The one we were going to see is called the white control room. In the lobby of the building they had a display showing what mission control consoles looked like for the Apollo, Space Shuttle, and the future Orion programs. At the time we were in the observation room looking out over the white mission control room, it was acting as the backup mission control room for the International Space Center. You can see some of the information displayed on the primary screens in the photos. It look pretty laidback while we were there. Eventually, this mission control room will become the primary mission control for the Orion program. The first Orion mission is planned for late 2019 or early 2020 with an unmanned flight around the moon and back to test all the vehicle systems. One of the monitors was showing a ceremony in another of the mission control rooms for the 16^thanniversary of the loss of the shuttle Columbia in 2003. We could see another mission control room on our trip back to the tram, but it was inactive at the time. The second stop was the mockup building. In this location they have low fidelity full scale mockups of space craft that are, or soon will be, in use by our astronauts. The mockups are used to train astronauts and also by engineers for problem solving. There was full-scale mockups of the International Space Station (ISS) modules, the future astronaut transfer vehicles Starship (Boeing) and Orion (Lockheed Martin). In addition, there were several possible Mars rovers, robots being developed for the ISS as well as for future Mars missions. It was all pretty cool stuff! Last stop on the tour was the Saturn 5 building. Inside this building they had a flight certified Apollo era Saturn 5 rocket stack. These were segments of planned Apollo missions (18-20) that were canceled when congress took their funding for the Vietnam War in 1972. The hardware of the various segments were at different stages of construction at the time the program was canceled. One of the left over Flight Certified Saturn V rockets was used to loft Skylab in 1973. The rest went into museums. The final Apollo mission was Apollo 17 in 1972, which brought home the largest amount of moon rocks and the only mission with a Geologist astronaut. It also covered the widest area of exploration due to the moon rover. The first three Apollo missions were unmanned and used to test the systems, similar to what is going to be done with Orion. Apollo 7 was the first manned Apollo mission, an earth orbit test of the Apollo systems and testing of procedures. Apollo 8 flew out to the moon and performed 10 Moon orbits before returning. Apollo 9 tested the process of extracting the Lunar Lander, flying to the moon, manned flight test of the Lunar Module (LM) and rendezvous procedures. Apollo 10 was the dress rehearsal of the lunar landing including the LM descending to within 8.4 miles of the surface of the moon. Don’t you know it had to be hard for the guys in that LM, being that close to being the first humans to land on the moon but had to abort and return to the Command Module! Of course Apollo 11 was the first landing on the moon. Apollo 12 (Landed near the Surveyor 3 unmanned probe to retrieve some of its instruments), 14 (Alan Shepard hit two golf balls on the lunar surface), 15, 16, 17 also landed. Apollo 13 was the infamous mission where an oxygen tank in the Service Module exploded and the world watch as those three astronauts struggled to get home alive. 

 

Shuttle Enterprise and the NASA 502 747 Carrier Aircraft

Apollo Era Lunar Module

Apollo Era Mission Control Console

Shuttle Era Mission Control Console

Orion Era Mission Control Console (in use now)

White Mission Control Center

Main ISS Display

ISS Mockup Segments

Orion Space Capsule Mockup

Starship Capsule Mockup

Mockups or future Mars Rovers

Space Robot

Saturn V Rocket

Leslie in front of the Saturn V first stage

After returning to the Houston Space Center Visitor Center we walked through the other displays for the Mars Landing, Project Mercury (first US space capsules with a single astronaut) and Project Gemini (with two astronauts), Space Shuttle and the carrier 747 and finally the moon rocks brought back by Apollo. And yes, we touched a moon rock! Walking through the Mars landing area was sobering. They point out that the first person to step onto the moon is probably barely in grade school! They had one display on Mars weather. In it they discuss how Mars climate is changing, getting colder, and they don’t know why. Must be those man made rovers!

 

Mercury Capsule 

Apollo Capsule

Apollo Moon Rocks

Shuttle Cockpit

Displays in the NASA 502 747 Carrier aircraft

David in front of the Shuttle and Carrier 747

Then we ran out of time, before we could get to the ISS displays, as they close at 5PM. We had a great time and learned a lot. We will probably go back next year.