Day 44 - Houston: NASA

Our plan today - visit the NASA Space Center in Houston - the reality, we left too late, noon, and scrambled to see all the exhibits :/ We didn't realize that this weekend is Presidents Day, so a lot of people were out seeing the sites. The Johnson Space Center tram line was an hour long, and then after the hour visit we waited to get back to the main center, so about half of our stay was used up. Still we saw many very cool things and several movies playing in various theaters in the Space Center.

After learning how astronauts sleep (at all angles), eat (packaged food), drink (their own filtered urine!), exercise (2 hours per day), I decided that I'm glad I'm not an astronaut! Plus there are a lot of things that can go wrong, with possibly deadly outcomes. We saw a film about an Italian astronaut, Luca Parmitano, that almost drowned on a space walk because his spacesuit's water-cooled liner had a leak :( Anyways I'm really glad some people are doing this amazing and adventurous job for us!

Entrance with space shuttle atop Boeing 747

Johnson Space Center building, collegiate style campus

Inside the old Apollo testing area

Apollo test computers, a whopping total of 1MB of data! :)

I wonder what the test "urine dump nozzle" button does?

Data archive for Apollo, no flash drives back then!

Open space shuttle image

The back of an intact Apollo rocket, never used

Francesca touching a real moon rock!

Hello my precious! (big meteorite)

A Robonaut (it may happen...)

Toilet like that used on the International Space Station (ISS)

Picture of an ISS mission with an Italian astronaut (Luca Parmitano) who almost died on a space walk due to a space suit malfunction (the near drowning incident)

Samantha Cristoforetti, Italian astronaut with longest time in space record until 2017 (when another female astronaut broke the record)

Top of Apollo rocket with command module

Side view of Apollo rocket