Last year, when I was in Houston, we went on the Level 9 tour at NASA. For $3 more you could get a year long membership. So, since I’m back here, I should make the most out of that and use it before it expires.

They still have the big airplane carrying a shuttle on its back, cluttering up the lawn like some advanced redneck. Only this time, you can actually go in. But it is a classic bait and switch. Only after you go in do you find out that it isn’t a real space shuttle, but an advanced facsimile. The real ones are too radioactive to let people near. It is the real plane, so you can see cool stuff there. They have even left some of the ballast that they needed to help keep the front of the plane heavier for an even flight. That really makes you wonder about overweight baggage fees. (Sorry. Old joke. Couldn’t help myself.)

They had a lot of other cool exhibits. We saw an IMAX movie about “Journey to Space”. They had the actual shuttlecraft Galileo from the original Star Trek. I geeked out a bit with that. They also had some of the original capsules from early missions in beautiful displays. 

There were also a lot of games. In a way it was like the Telus World of Science. Probably with a bigger budget. There was one game where you try to control some blimps to go through a hoop. Unfortunately I think the air conditioning was too strong so the blimps just huddled in a corner, no matter how much engine power you used. Another display let you compare upright and recumbent bicycles. I couldn’t tell the difference, because the bicycles were sized for little kids.

But overall it was very cool. I saw amazing things that are a great part of human history. There was fun stuff to do. The train routing game was a hoot. The hover chair was easy to abuse. I am terrible at landing a space shuttle on a runway. Crew capsules are cramped. And they have an evil gift shop. I don’t want to talk about that last one.

2016-3-2 0:00