It was awesome.

It was a great tour. You pay more but you get to see things most people don’t.

It started off at the Neutral Boyancy Center. There you see actual astronauts practicing with a full-scale mockup of the ISS underwater. It’s hard to see much of anything because it is underwater, but they provided lots of video cameras so you could see what was going on. Biggest pool I’ve ever seen.

After that we went to lunch at an actual NASA cafeteria. We got a meal ticket so I could eat as much as I wanted. No astronaut food, but a lot of options. There was also the internal NASA gift shop where you could get the stuff only the employees can get. Which really isn’t that different, but it is cheaper and no tax. I got a mug. A Brazilian girl was squealing a lot over all the options. She was a big Chris Hadfield fan. Go Canada.

From there we went to mission control. We could see them operating the ISS and seeing views from the station. Then we saw the old Apollo mission control, which is treated like a museum. At that point an actual mission control person came and answered questions. Very informative. NASA did have a reaction to Leonard Nimoy’s death. I’ll need to check the videos they posted.

Then off to the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility. There they had copies of everything on the ISS and then some. You turn a corner and suddenly you bump into the nose of a space shuttle. There was a Canadarm over there. (They all call it the Canadarm. Not jus the arm.) Then there was the experimental stuff that they might use on Mars. 

Finally, they had the Oh-Wow moment when they take you into the Saturn V building. You go in and you are staring at the thrusters that got us to the moon. Even lying on their side, they are bigger than a house. I never realized just how huge they were.

That was the entire day. Because they filled it so much, we get to go back tomorrow complimentary. So we are going to go back and see the exhibits the mere mortals get to see.

2015-3-5 20:15