FYI, the drive from Roswell to Houston is quite possibly the worst thing I have ever had to do, ever. This includes the incident with the septic tank.
It was all worth it though. Let's start at the beginning.
I pulled up at a Super 8 because I saw a sign that indicated that it had wifi available (little did I know that it was 3.99 a night, wtf). I promptly fell asleeep on the bed fully clothed, as driving 1205km in 12 hours will totally take it out of you. It was usually too hot inside to keep the windows up, and too cold and loud with the window2s down (west Texas has an 80mph speed limit) so the drive was miserable. Not to mention that no matter *when* you start, you're going to be driving at night, the days are too short nowadays.
You must be asking, "but Sean, how could anything be worth it at such a cost?". The answer was today. This summer, in Erice, I met up with someone who works in ISS operations, in the Solar Radiation Analysis Group (SRAG) who offered to give me a visit of the Johnson Space Center ( a detail that I'm certain has been mentioned in this blog at least once or twice before ).
So, this morning I wake up (quite miserable, the drive last night was *that* bad) and make my way to the JSC. I find the building where I'm supposed to pick up my ID / access badge, only to find out that not all the paperwork had been done. While waiting, my contact and I crossed the street to the Rocket Park, home of a Saturn V rocket.
I knew it was big, but I was not prepared for what I saw; it really blew me away. I'm going back tomorrow to get some pictures, and just to get the feel for it again. They also have a Redstone and Little Joe rocket nextby for a sense of scale. The difference between sub-orbital and orbital flight isn't very much, but holy crow the difference between orbital and lunar is gigantic.
I visited the ISS control room (from the observation deck) and then got to go up to the Apollo-era control room. Buttons, pneumatic tubes, the works. It was like being back in the 60s (not that I would know what they were like in the first place).
So, SRAG monitors the sun for activity that might be dangerous to astronauts onboard ISS, and they have their own control staetion, albeit it is not housed in the control center, for understandable reasons. I got to see their stationa dn then my contact and I headed to (what I think was) building 7 which houses full sized mock-ups of ISS modules, Soyuz velssels, one full sized orbiter, the nose section of another, even a few Orion capsules (may they rest in peace...) and a rotary joint for the solar panels (probably there for the incident from a few years ago).
I wandered around looking for 3 different breweries in Houston that my GPS reciever says exist but my eyes do not. I got to "admire" the highways for about three hours before ending up in BJ's Restorant and Brewery, a pretty nice place with a hug beer selection- 8 beers brewed in-house, Trappist beers imported from Belgium, and a plethora of others. Their beer is decent for a resto-brewery (as opposed to a Brewpub, this place is like a Cheesecake Factory crossed with a Les Trois Brasseurs), But I'm going to have to find something else to draw my attention, there is no free wifi here (for all you people looking down on me right now, you'd be looking for an internet fix, too, were you alone.
What an adventure. I might also get to have lunch with a crew member from STS-131 tomorrow, but the details are still uncertain. I will visit the JSC visitor's center tomorrow ("Space Center Houston") and try to get a good night's sleep; the next day I make a B-line for Huntsville, home of the Marshall Spaceflight Center (and Space Camp USA). It's another 1200km. I have a sneaking suspicion that it will be another incident where I drive a horrible number of kilometers before doing something really awesome.
While I have 2 full days in Houston, I only have 1 in Huntsville. I will be meeting my sister in Cleveland on Friday. We'll scout out the Great Lakes Science Center, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and then head on home on the Monday (7 days from now). I can feel that my tires are balding, if there's any snow at all the drive will take me many hours instead of "only" twelve.... I have a sneaking suspicion that I will taking advantage of a certain 300-minute energy boosting product that night.
