The Van Blog

Last Thursday I was privileged enough to be able to go for lunch in the cafeteria inside the Houston Space Center’s compound.  It was kind of a typical cafeteria experience—complete with saran-wrapped sandwiches and tiny cartons of milk—except that there were astronauts there.  Real freakin’ astronauts!  After grabbing my tray, I stood there like an awkward eighth-grader wondering where to sit—with the astronauts or with the rocket scientists?  (And no… I never thought I would have to ask myself that).  Which one’s the cool table?  How come high school memories always come back to bite in the oddest places… such as inside NASA?

To debunk some common space rumours: rocket scientists really are terribly smart, I did see robots, the Ground Controller’s name was Bill and not Tom, and there is such a thing as ‘Astronaut parking only’.

During my fancy-pants “Level 9” tour of the Space Center (for which one pays through the nose, but is then given an all-access VIP pass and allowed to go basically anywhere), I saw so many radical things that my socks were thoroughly and completely rocked.

This is the GOOD tour for NASA

While on my tour, I saw people from the regular tours filing in lines through glassed-in walkways above my head.  I’m afraid I had the most intense smirk on my face as I looked up at them from the floor amongst the rocket modules.  Oh man, I touched space things!

I saw three versions of the Mission Control Center: a simulation for training, a modern new one in which the crew were communicating with the five astronauts that are in space right now, and the original one from the first moon landing and the Apollo era.  J.T. and I were in the real Mission Control just as the astronauts were going to sleep for the night.  Images of the space station were up on the screen and we saw them pass from light into darkness.  Astronauts that are in space witness a sunrise or sunset every 45 minutes.

pictures of the darkening space station on the right and the map of where it's located in the middle.

After seeing the real Mission Control, my tour group was taken into the old Mission Control room, which is now a national historic site.  The old building still looks like the seventies inside.  It is lit with fluorescent tubes, and the white paint and faded linoleum have a yellow tinge.  It also still smells like cigarettes and burning coffee.  Once inside old Mission Control, we were allowed to touch and photograph whatever we wanted.  My extremely privileged rear end took a seat in the very same chair someone sat in for the first steps on the moon… and for the Apollo 13 incident.  I tell you, that was one mind-blowing sit-down.  Nothing has been changed from the way it used to be, and I got a good look at the rotary dial phones, the bright red direct line to the White House, and the vacuum tubes for sending mail.  And just in case you’re wondering, yes—I definitely sat there pressing buttons and pretending I worked there.  Who wouldn’t?

Me pretending to work at NASA

Other highlights of the tour included, for me, seeing a Dutch astronaut training in a space suit inside the giant pool, seeing all the mock space modules that the astronauts train in, seeing “Charlotte”—the Spidernaut robot, and admiring the size of the Saturn 5 rocket (which was built and then never launched due to previous budget cuts).

Sadly, every NASA employee we ran into (a ground control guy, a training person, and both our guides) was apprehensively waiting to hear the final conclusion concerning Obama’s budget cuts.  Obama has proposed cutting the cash flow for continuing manned missions into space.  There are lots of funds for continued scientific work and robots, but not for any more human astronauts to lift off.  There are only four missions left before NASA retires its Space Shuttle, and the last launch will be from Florida this April.  If I wasn’t absolutely intent on hanging out in New Orleans to hear some jazz and then heading for a good friend of mine in Nashville, I would be truckin’ on down to Florida to watch.

As for other fun facts about space that are stuck in my brain, here they are:

-It takes three days, at present, to reach the moon—but only two to get to the space station.

-It takes six months to reach Mars

-Someone near NASA right now is developing a plasma engine that could make a rocket reach the moon in 90 minutes and reach Mars in 39 days.

-NASA wants to return to the moon, look for water sources, and possibly put an outpost on the South Pole because the moon has temperate climates.

-Astronauts watch movies in space when they have some down time and their favourites really are Space Cowboys, Armageddon, and Apollo 13.  They also got to see the new Star Trek movie before it was released on Earth (and I can’t believe I just got to type the phrase “released on Earth” in a serious sentence… ).

I asked my tour guide if the astronauts ever watched the X-Files movies, and he said that was “really more of a ‘Building 16’ thing.”  What!?  I KNEW THEY EXISTED!

Me and the Apollo guys... just hangin'