Aylmer Express "MoHo" Extravaganza 2006

In case you were wondering why we decided to go to Houston, today’s activities should help clarify this. We jumped in the car and started heading south to the Johnson Space Center (no relation). That’s right, NASA! We have been looking forward to this trip and I was hoping that it would live up to our expectations. When we first arrived we had to quickly make up our minds on what to do. They offer a 90-minute tour of the entire facility and the next one was leaving in a few minutes. Since I heard some others talking about how they missed a seat on the previous tour, I thought that we should grab a spot on the tour which was about to leave since it still had room. We all jumped on a little trolley which whisked us around the NASA campus and the first stop was the building which held the original Mission Control. We actually got to enter the viewing gallery for Mission Control. This is the same room that was used for all the Apollo missions as well as all Space Shuttle launches up to 1996. This was the same room where presidents, dignitaries, and astronaut families alike looked on during some of the most historic space events. The room is no longer used and has since been restored to what it looked like during the Apollo days, except for the big screens. We then moved on to the building where they do most of the training for space flights, the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility. This tour allowed us to see life-sized replicas of many of the components of the Space Station and the Space shuttle. Here astronauts come to get familiar with the environment they will be dealing with in space as well as practice maneuvers that they will have to perform in space. Some of these maneuvers are actually safety/rescue drills just so that nothing will be unfamiliar to them regardless of what happens on their mission. I was very proud to see the Canadarm2 prominently displayed. It turns out that there is a fairly large portion of this building dedicated to practicing how to use this robotic arm which was designed and built in Canada. They had a replica of the station that is used to control the Canadarm, complete with video displays showing images from cameras on the Canadarm itself. The part I found funny was that there was a large black tarp set up in between this station and the actual arm. The guide told us this was set up so that the astronauts using this station for training would not be able to see the actual Canadarm except via the video displays, just as it would be in space. What? Are you trying to tell me that even astronauts cheat if given the chance? What has become of our heroes? The next and final stop on the tour was a visit to the building holding a real Saturn V rocket. This particular rocket was to be used for one of the Apollo launches but the Apollo project was ended before it went into use. Let me start by stating the obvious. This rocket is incredibly huge! You realize just how big this monster is when you are standing right beside it. In this case it was set up on its side with each of the components slightly separated so that you can clearly see which parts do what as well as which parts get jettisoned when. It is quite amazing that we humans have managed to figure out how to build a rocket like this, then be able to actually build them well enough on this scale to work properly, and then set everything up so that this incredible amount of fuel is managed just precisely as required. I think that if someone sat you down back in 1960 and told you that the Saturn V rocket was the device that would shoot us to the moon and then explained to you how it was going to work, you’d probably think the person was insane. I think the Saturn V has got to be an example of necessity being the mother of invention. That brought our tour to an end but it was really the beginning of our visit to NASA Space Center. Next up was a presentation on some background into the current space program. Why that next? Because we were walking by just as it was starting and there were no lines and it sounded interesting. Here we found out that the Space Shuttle was originally designed to be the “18-wheeler” of the space program. It’s primary use was to deliver payloads of equipment into space, primarily to help build the space station. When the space shuttle was designed they also thought that it would be making perhaps up to 100 flights into space per year. What they did not expect was that the space shuttle would still be in use 25 years later. It has been in service much longer than envisioned and that may explain some of the issues that have plagued the space shuttle program in recent years. Anyway, it was a very interesting multi-media discussion about where we are and where we might be going. Just as this finished the IMAX movie titled “Inside the Space Station” was starting so we quickly made our way over there and grabs some seats. Have I mentioned how much I like visiting these types of places in the off season? Anyway, this turned out to be an awesome movie that did a fantastic job of bringing you into the up-to-date world of what is going on with the Space Station. The kids loved it and it really got them in the right state of mind. By the time we exited the theatre, we were running out of time so we had a bit of a quandary on our hands as to what to do next. We quickly tried to cover as many of the hundreds of displays and hands-on activities as possible before it closed. I decided to split off to check out some of the space artifacts and found this area to be very interesting. They had everything from the Skylab mock-up module which was used for actual training to the training mockup of the moon buggy to the cockpit of the space shuttle to actual rocks from space that were retreived from the moon. This place was definitely a lot of fun and very impressive. We simply did not allow enough time to do all that we would have liked. But what else is new? If, after spending over 5 hours at a museum, without stopping for any meals or waiting in any lines, you still have more you want to see and do, it must be a pretty freakin’ good museum! We hit the road at rush hour but I was hoping that we might avoid the worst of it as we would be generally going against the flow. As soon as we exited NASA it was bumper-to-bumper. Hmmmm. But once we reached the highway it opened right up and it was clear sailing all the way back. If I may quote a famous astronaut by the name of Buzz Aldrin, it was “magnificent desolation.” As I mentioned, we had not even stopped for lunch so we were starved. We ended up pulling into a local place that serves southern BBQ. It was not unlike “Gates” BBQ in Kansas City, for those of you familiar with that type of establishment. Great BBQ at reasonable prices. Then it was back to the MoHo where we sucked up a little WiFi and a little swimming in the heated outdoor pool followed by a little hot tubbing and some socializing with fellow MoHo-ers. Then Chantal and I sat down to figure out where the heck we are going tomorrow. All we know is that we are heading east …

Today’s word:

quandary \KWAHN-duh-ree; -dree\, noun:
A state of difficulty, perplexity, doubt, or uncertainty.