The Road To Indy

August 29th - Houston, Texas

As an 8 year old boy, I was mesmerized by the Apollo 11 moon landing and ever since, I have dreamed about becoming an American. I am VERY close to having that dream come true ... and I can't think of any better way to anticipate this privilege than to pay a visit to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, the location of the historic Apollo Mission Control Center.

"We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard..."

John F. Kennedy -September 12th, 1962

It was a thrill to see the lectern from which JFK's famous Rice Stadium "Moon Speech" was delivered.

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JFK's entire speech is available HERE

In the museum gallery at the Space Center, you will find some of the original spacecraft such as Gordon Cooper's "Faith 7" from the Mercury program...

... or the Gemini 5

... and the Apollo 17 Command Module.

Here's a duplicate of the Lunar Rover...

... and, of course, there would be a lot of Moon rocks on display!

This is one of the Space Suttle engines ... The display podiums offer a good frame of reference for size.

And now, the REAL fun starts: My long-anticipated visit to the Apollo Mission Control Center! The 60's era buildings in the Houston NASA complex are extremely unassuming and lacking of any architectural interest. Since they all look pretty much the same, the building which contains the historic Mission Control would never be identified by an unguided visitor.

The actual control room and working environment seems MUCH MUCH smaller in real life -so much history and drama in SUCH a small space! This room has been left untouched with all of its original equipment since the end of the Apollo program.

Our tour continued on to the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility, a training and simulation facility...

From the catwalk, we can see the second generation of the Canadarm being used for training purposes...

In what is known as "Rocket Park", we get to see a Redstone rocket in person! Check out the F-1 engine placed beside it for size reference.

I think the climax of my visit came when we were shown a fully assembled (and mission ready) Saturn V rocket placed on its side and housed in a special hangar. Although there are two other existing Saturn V's, this is the only one that is still operational because it was not reassembled from "junk" parts as were the other two. This Saturn was simply never used after it was originally assembled.

PLEASE do not turn on any power switches as I shoot this video!!

Getting close to the Saturn V :-)

The tip of the Saturn V.

Absolutely incredible!

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It's time to RETURN to the MOON, and proceed to MARS. Why did we ever drop the ball and lose SO much time??

August 29th - Houston, Texas