For our second day in Houston, D & I decided to take the boys to the NASA Johnson Space Center. When I was twelve, I visited NASA with my church youth group. I remember wanting to go to Space Camp there.
We arrived at Space Center Houston just as they opened. We asked one of the workers what would be the best thing to do before the crowds grew larger. He suggested we take the Red and Blue Tours. The Red Tour took you to the astronaut training area and the Blue Tour took you to the Mission Control area. Each tour took about an hour.
There were plenty of seats on our first tour.
Boogs was very interested in the work being performed on/with robots. The tour took you on a glassed-in path where you could look down and see the scientists, engineers, astronauts, and others working.
He wanted to make sure I got a picture of this robot.
After leaving the training area, the tour tram took us over to Rocket Park, where a Saturn V rocket is housed.
Wow, that is one tall rocket. The walls of the building were covered with information about each Apollo mission.
I liked the Eugene A. Cernan quote about Apollo 17, "That last footprint on the moon? Check it out. It's my boot size."
We went back to the Space Center after the Red Tour and had to wait in line for about 25 minutes to catch a tram for the Blue Tour. The trams really started to fill up fast. Every seat was taken.
The mission control area in this picture is from the 1960s set up of mission control. They showed us live footage of people working on the International Space Station. It was really neat.
The boys were VERY excited to get back to the Space Center so they could explore the Mythbusters area. There were a lot of neat experiments set up that the Mythbusters crew had investigated on the show. The Slow/Fast lanes were trying to see if you get more or less wet when walking or running through rain. Boogs ran round and round in circles on this.
This experiment was for timing your grip strength. The boys competed to see who could hang on the longest.
This was one of their favorites. It was an experiment to see if buttered toast always landed butter side down. You place a piece of (fake) buttered toast on the table then spin a crank to make mannequin hands knock the toast to the ground.
We all had fun trying to remove a table cloth without knocking the dishes off the table.
The Superhero experiment timed you to see if you could really be a hero and get dressed into a costume in a phone booth in less than 45 seconds.
The boys had fun with this one, it was from the episode on Mythbusters where Adam tried to light his farts.
There are telephone books holding up this swing.
We took a lunch break after we finished playing in the Mythbusters area. Then, we watched a film about space exploration in the Space Center Theater before touring the Starship Gallery.
Boogs was able to touch a moon rock.
We left that area and went outside to tour the Shuttle replica mounted on top of a NASA 905 shuttle carrier aircraft in Independence Plaza.
We explored inside the plane. It held many exhibits and hands-on problem solving tasks. The boys really liked it.
I had to get this picture of the Canadian space arm for Daddy.
We went back inside and spent another hour playing in the Angry Birds exploration area.
This was a popular task. You had to guide the chair to make a light hit a target out in space.
We vistited the gift shop just before we left the Space Center. Boogs bought a glow in the dark t-shirt with the solar system on it with the words "The Universe Revolves Around Me". Ha!
We left NASA and headed over to D's uncle's house for dinner and a visit. It was almost nine by the time we made it back to the hotel. We let the boys swim a bit before bed.
I'm glad I was able to take Boogs to NASA. He enjoyed it but said he does not want to be an astronaut. He was more interested in being an engineer to work with those robots.
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