24/10/18 Houston is so different from what I imagined. Way bigger and less ‘desert-like’. I drove through a few high end suburbs where all houses are more like little mansions. There was still a lot of water on the streets, not sure if they had flooding in this area or just heavy rain that day.
I drove to the Space Center, officially a NASA site and spent more time than expected. It rained pretty much all day so I thought I would be safe and dry inside. I arrived around 10am and they offered a tram tour of the buildings around so I joined the 11am tour hoping to fall between 2 showers but we all got drenched anyway. The tour was about 90 min and explores a storage facility where they keep a replica of Saturn 5 (the biggest rocket ever built by NASA), a few admin buildings and the Mission Control (still a government territory) used for the Appollo missions in the 60’s, including the one when we landed on the Moon on 20th July 1969. The room is no longer in use and is currently renovated but it still has the famous consoles and monitors we all have seen in movies and documentaries. There is a replica of the room on another level, as a back up and that room has been used for many past missions too. The existing control room is still in on site but located in another building, with more modern technology. In the 60’s, they were proud of their gigantic digital storage capacity they had (with IBM computers), which was only a few megabytes ?.
I went to all the scheduled sessions that day (it was not busy at all) to watch short movies on the new technologies, how the astronauts live in space or EVA23 (the 23d extra vehicular activity – in other words when they get out of the base to repair or investigate something for example). EVA23 happened in 2013 and an Italian astronaut almost died due to a suit malfunction.
I learned that there are 6 astronauts permanently on the ISS base, but only 3 currently as they had some issues recently. They have to work out 2h per day, 7 days a week to keep their muscle mass.
The first American flight was in 1965 with Gemini.
I was surprised that the exhibits don’t talk about the missions that have failed, which are tragic but important to the success of the agency and nothing either on the conspiracies about the potential fake orchestration of men landing on the moon. Everything was all focused on the positive and successful activities, which is probably best for the young audience who also comes to learn about the spatial activity.
I checked in late at the Houston hostel and met Dee, a Sydney girl on a stopover from Costa Rica, on her way home. As neither of us had plans, we agreed to spend the next day together.
25/10/18 Dee and I had basic breakkie at the hostel and we decided to go to Galveston for the day. After 1h drive, we arrived in a very quiet neighborhood along the beach. No cars or people anywhere. The pier area looked nice along the beach but the entrance required a paid fee so we did not get in.
We walked in the historic district, stopped by an antique shop and went for lunch at a local café where we shared a shrimp burger. We drove back to the city hoping to find some animation but Houston downtown was dead. Maybe because it was a weekday. The shopping centre we entered was dead too, we shared a cookie before going to the nearest bar for a drink. Raspberry mojito was nice ?. Then we went to Pappacito’s, a mexican chain restaurant recommended by a friend of Dee (which was nice) then to the Scream festival to experience the haunted house they created for Halloween. It was Dee’s idea and she was a little nervous about it but we had fun. The site was not busy at all, there were a few typical fair games on the Halloween theme, a metal music band and free drinks. The haunted house was a big maze well decorated, you progress through multiple rooms inspired from horror movies and real actors with great costumes try to scare you on the way. A surgeon eating the leg of a patient, Carrie, waking zombies, clowns, psychopaths with chain saws were a few. My favourite was the graveyard zone, which looked real to me with the gravel and spooky smoke effects. We entered the house with another group and there was an 8 year old girl who screamed and cried all along. I was surprised when she said she would do another one after cooling down outside!
