Part two of our Memorial Day vacation. Houston is a short 3 1/2 hours from Jennings so we headed west and stayed two nights with my aunt who lives there. Addison hung out with his cousin and they watched Star Wars Episode II about 20 times. It was more like twice but it felt like 20.
On Tuesday my mom and aunt watched Harry while Dear Husband and I took Addison to The Space Center Houston. This place has something for everyone. The NASA tour, artifacts, museum type stuff, movies for those who are there to learn about NASA and space, and for those who just have energy to burn there is a play structure, flight simulators, hands on play/learning exhibits for the kids, and much, much more.
This is what you see when you first walk in. 4 stories of fun. I think Addison did some sort of cartwheel/back flip when he saw this. We were there about 6 hours and still didn’t get to see everything they had to offer. Mostly because we had to keep coming back to this play structure.
The highlight of the tour was a huge rocket just sitting in a hangar. It was built in the 70s for one of the Apollo missions when they ran out of money and it never got to blast off. For years it just sat outside until they decided to build a hangar around it and I guess make it part of the tour. It was really impressive.
If it were standing up it would be taller than the Statue of Liberty.
Addison was pretty amazed at the size of the rocket boosters. It’s so much fun to watch him learn and be amazed at the discovery.
Dear Husband thought it essential to get a picture of Lt. Hunkle in front of a real live space ship. (If you understand that reference then I’m impressed and call you a true fan)
The food court wasn’t too bad either. This “souvenir” cup was way over priced but what the hell, it’s vacation and I’m funding space exploration.
Oh look, it’s Commander Amos!
Amongst the fun we actually learned a lot too. Some want you to believe that NASA is being shut down. I’m not going to say who they are (coughfoxnewscoughcough). What we did learn straight from the source (a good place to get information it turns out) is that the space shuttle program only is being shut down. It has served it’s purpose. The International Space Station will continue to be in use. Our astronauts will still be sent there via the space program in Russia, until the completion of NASA’s next crew spacecraft, Orion, as part of the upcoming Constellation Program, whose missions include the Space Station, a return to the moon, and ultimately Mars. Sometimes I hear people complain that kids can’t grow up to be astraunauts any more because certain administrations want to shut it all down. Actually, we don’t have the technology to send people out as far as they want to go but they’re working on it. So, you never know. Okay, I’ll get off my soap box now. Anyhoo – lots of really interesting stuff (if you’re into that kinda thing) can be found at nasa.gov
It was a good day.
Kathryn
all i remember from the space center was the awesome gold t-shirt! i want to go back!!! 🙂