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Sunday - NASA, we are good to go!

Another lie in - how chilled are we!

The plan was to hire a car and drive to the Houston Space Centre but Renee and Steve managed to convince us to accept their offer to drive. Within 5 minutes of getting on the freeway, Ken and I realised we had made the right decision.

If you thought driving in Newham was stressful - you ain't seen nothing yet! 5 lanes wide, no overtaking protocol and road signs that are either so small you need a magnifying glass to read or are positioned at the exact same position you need to turn. It was a miracle that we only had to do 2 U'ys!

If you ever hear us complaining about driving in Newham just say "Houston" and that should shut us up!

We were full of anticipation as we had our photos taken and then were given our boarding passes for the tram tour around Mission Control. No-one warned us about the Houston freeze! It was about 50F yesterday with a wind chill making it feel more like 32F.

We were more concerned about hypothermia than seeing the command centre and Astronaut training facilities. Imagine our surprise, when the first thing we saw on entering the secure area was a field of prize winning Longhorn Cattle! I have no idea what the connection is.

Our first visit was to Building 30S -The Mission Control Command Centre where they run and monitor the shuttle missions. Being the weekend there were no staff in, but we could see where they will be sitting and controlling the next Shuttle Mission from. It is scheduled to launch from Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on Thursday 7th December. It will be the first night time launch in 4 years. We were able to watch the screen that tracked the position of the Space Station - it was flying over S.America as we watched. It orbits the earth every 90 minutes!

This was followed by a visit to the Astronaut training facility where they have mockups of every part of the Space Station. We also saw the Soyuz escape capsule that they use if they need to return to earth in an emergency. The reason that only 3 astronauts are living on the Space Station at any one time is because the Soyuz can only take 3.

They also have a complete mockup of the Shuttle in the facility - It's huge!.The Canada Arm that they use to move the shuttle payload is so heavy due to gravity, it can't be moved. So they've devised another one that simulates the movements in zero gravity. They are so accurate with it, they can move a small box.

The final area that we were able to visit was the Saturn V rocket display. On our Google Earth link you can see it in the open. Yesterday it was housed in a huge building - they apparently built around it. It's impossible to give you an idea of the scale of it - so you'll just have to wait for the photos.

After 1.5hrs in the freezing wind, we were chilled to the core and so returning to the tourist area was a relief. Note to those of you who intend visiting - TAKE THERMALS!

Back in the warmth we watched films about the developments over the last 30years. Sadly in our party of 4, I was the only one alive when they landed on the moon in 1969! I'm part of history!!!

We were able to go inside a shuttle and see the controls that the astronauts use to pilot it. But of course, the best bit was seeing the 'Personal Waste Disposal Unit' - toilet to you and me. Why would you need 'scrapers' ?

I think for all of us our favourite part was the Museum where you could see the capsules that went up in to space and brought the astronauts home. They had a replica moon buggy (the original is still up there) and space suits. How can anyone ever believe that the moon landing was a hoax?

Houston Space Centre has the largest collection of Moon rock samples as it is NASA's main research and analysis centre. We were able to see many different rock samples and moon 'soil'. We were even allowed to touch one of them!

Nikki and Jamie had a 'Behind the scenes' tour of the space centre earlier in the week, where they got to visit many of the working areas in Mission Control, talk to one of the astronauts who is going on the shuttle on Thursday and meet the Flight Director for Thursday's mission.

All of our combined photos are amazing - great resource if you are teaching a topic Space. We'll make them available on the website - so watch this space.

Apparently last night was a full moon, how cool to have taken a photo of the moon from the Space Centre. Sadly it wasn't to be as there was too much cloud. Good excuse to make a return visit.

A great day was had by all and the return journey only required 1 U'y, when we suddenly realised we were headed for Galverston instead of Houston. I'm so glad Ken and I didn't hire a car - we could have ended up anywhere. How do people manage out here without TomTom?

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