Houston, Texas! After screening "Steve Saves L.A." at the Cinesol Film Festival, I stopped in Houston to visit NASA!
But it wasn't going to be just ANY visit...
A few months previous, I'd spoken at an event called "Amazing Skies." There I met Chris Ramsay, who works with NASA's Shuttle program.
The local paper had a free Spider-Man comic book in it that morning... With Spidey rescuing a space capsule. A good omen for the day's trip.
It was September 11th, and everybody was freaking out like they always do. There were even TV cameras at the airport.
Nobody seemed to notice that there was a major shuttle mission going on. They were putting a new truss on the station that would DOUBLE the amount of power they got. But hey, September 11th, everybody panic.
First stop, Space Center Houston.
Space Center Houston is sort of the Disneyworld version of NASA.
They've got rides and movies and displays of space artifacts.
It was pretty cool. Lots of stuff to see and do.
This was a mockup of the space station interior. A woman demonstrated how the station crew does stuff like eat and go to the bathroom.
There was a MASSIVE hanging model of the completed space station. This is what it'll look like around 2013.
They had this really lame sponsorship deal with Omega watches. There were all these amazing spacesuits in display cases, and each one of them was wearing this ridiculous Omega watch.
The coolest part of the museum was the Space Shuttle mockup.
A lot of people don't realize that only the front part of the shuttle is habitable.
The rest of it is the cargo bay, which isn't pressurized. It's just like a big truck bed.
The cockpit mockup was really cool.
I took a lot of pictures.
I mean a LOT of pictures.
Like, an obsessive amount of pictures.
But not everybody wants to see pictures in sheer bulk. So if you DO, there's a link to the unedited photostream at the bottom of this page.
Knock yourself out.
Uh oh! I'm out of time! I gotta get over to REAL NASA and meet Chris!
Just down the road is the actual NASA, Johnson Space Center.
I had to sign in and get a badge and everything.
This is Chris, my tour guide!
Chris was kind enough to give me the full-on behind-the-scenes tour of the Johnson Space Center!
We started out in the rocket park, then moved inside to look at the huge Saturn V Rocket.
The rocket used to just be outside in the elements...
...But they have since built a HUGE building around it to protect it.
Though the wall is only about six inches longer than the nose of the rocket.
The rocket has been cleaned up and repainted, except for the capsule.
You can see the damage done by thirty years out in the rain and humidity.
Chris is a computer guy.
He pointed out the Saturn V's original computers, mounted along the rim of the rocket.
These computers would be hard pressed to beat today's pocket calculators, but they were enough to launch ships to the moon.
When they were restoring the rocket, they pulled one of the computers out to see what was left of it after thirty years of bugs and bird nests and rain and heat. And you know what?
It still worked.
Chris explained that they're using basically the same rocket for the new moon missions.
The same thing. With more modern parts, sure, but basically the exact same rocket.
The thinking is, "It did the job in the seventies. It'll do the job now."
Why reinvent the wheel?
Each of these engines provides a million pounds of thrust.
A MILLION.
They did the job then.
They'll do the job now.
Lunchtime at the Space Center! Their cafeteria looks like a lunchroom anywhere else.
It's what's nearby that makes NASA awesome.
This is their big training room.
These are all big mockups of the Space Station modules.
The astronauts train in these to get used to the tasks they'll have to complete in space.
Sure, there's gravity, and most of the buttons don't do anything.
But you gotta start somewhere....
Here's a mockup of one of the the Russian Soyuz capsules.
Sometimes they use them for travel to and from the station. There's one there permanently in case they ever need a lifeboat.
I told Chris the whole place reminded me of a Hollywood movie set.
There's all these little rooms that look perfectly real on the inside, but the outside is just fake.
And right next to all the amazingness there's a dude on the internet reading Fark.
There's tables full of power tools...
...Costumes hanging on racks...
...Amazing looking equipment that nobody's using, so it's tucked in a corner...
Tiny versions of big sets they don't have room to build, like this Mission Control mockup...
...And ladders and cables running everywhere.
The key difference, of course, being that these are used by astronauts, not actors.
They're pretending now, but eventually it will mean the difference between life and death.
'Cause in space, nobody can hear you yell "Take 2!"
It was awesome.
There's lots more pictures of this stuff if you follow the link at the end of the page. I went kind of nuts in here and took about a hundred photos.
I know. I know.
Finally, we got to go to the mecca of NASA...
APOLLO MISSION CONTROL!
It's been sealed off since the end of the Apollo program. They use a newer mission control next door for the shuttle missions.
This was the last photo I was able to take before the batteries died. Moments later a man took us back, back, back through the security doors, through the hallway, and INTO APOLLO MISSION CONTROL!
I got to sit in Gene Kranz's chair, stand at the console where he saved Apollo 13. It was one of the coolest things I have ever done in my life.
Okay, this is where the official story stops.
But if you're into this stuff like I am, there's more. Oh so much more.
Follow the link at the end of the page to see the complete, unedited photostream - Every single picture I took. All two hundred and two of them.
You have been warned.