Space Center Houston

I recently went to Space Center Houston accompanied by my family and our friends!

After just a fraction of our sedentary cross country road trip to florida, we arrived in Houston. Fourteen hours of driving got us all the way to our friends, the sondrups, house  My siblings, their friends and I played a game of kickball in their backyard while dinner was being made. After our hard fought battle we ate some delicious food made by our friend’s mom Jannelle. During and after dinner we conversed for a while about the drive and other things, then it was time to go to sleep, but this was one of the rare occasions that I was excited to go to sleep after the long drive! In the morning we had some amazing pancakes, my mom took the Sondrups first family pictures after having moved to Texas then we were off!

On our way to the space center, we saw the super tall buildings of downtown Houston. As we pulled in the parking lot the first thing we saw was a massive boeing 747 with a space shuttle sitting on top!

When we walked into the space center, we got little stickers assigning us an important duty of an Astronaut, Engineer, Scientist or Mission Control. 

Inside the space center they have on display the real space suits that went to the moon, the suits even had moon dust on them. They were in a line on the wall from the 1960s all the way to present day. We attended a show all about the ISS, a guide demonstrated how the astronauts ate, went to the bathroom, and how they slept. The show and the space suits were awesome, but the next part was even cooler! 

That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

-Neil Armstrong

Our tour took us across the street to the Johnson Space Center. The bus dropped us off at a massive building, inside was the huge Saturn V rocket. It is laid down and separated by section portraying the order in which the stages fall off. It is the only ready to launch Saturn V in the world. The rocket is 363 feet tall (60 feet taller than the statue of liberty). It weighs 6.2 million pounds, or the equivalent of 400 elephants. Each of the five engines provide 1.5 million pounds of thrust and 32 million horsepower. The tour guide listed off different facts and at the end let us look around. After the tour they took us back to the Houston space center. 

Houston, we have a problem

-John Swigert

After the Saturn V, we went to see the Shuttle Aircraft Carrier and The Space Shuttle. Inside the shuttle carrier, it has many different interactive touch screens and experiments. The carrier is a revised version of the Boeing 747-100. Only 2 of the modified Boeing 747-100 were ever built, and their only purpose was to transport the space shuttle. All of the interior furnishings were removed, but three struts were added to hold the shuttle. At the back of the plane, they added two vertical stabilizers. After we were done with the carrier, we went up to the shuttle. It was an exact replica, inside we saw the cockpit and the cargo bay that has the real robot “hand.” The shuttle is 184 feet long and weighs 4.5 million pounds. It can detach from the carrier in the air and glide to the runway. Nasa was planning on launching two shuttles per month, with their fleet that included Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour. The plan of 24 shuttles a year came to a halt when Challenger blew up mid flight, because of a major malfunction. The shuttle and the 747 were some of the most spectacular things I’ve ever seen!

We saw the real falcon 9 rocket that went to space, then we went to the gift shop. I would definitely recommend Space Center Houston to anyone near Houston, we had a wonderful time there.