NASA Disney

Over the weekend, we are were not allowed to be at Ellington, working on our project, which was a welcomed break. Saturday was filled with some homework, but we did take time to see the non-business part of Johnson Space Center, or JSC 'Disney'. This is for the public and is not an operational part of JSC.

On our way over there, we passed this great sign:

It seems that every business that can, will use space or NASA in some way in their name or logo. We have also seen a "Space Station Storage," "NASA Flowers" and other great names.

We traveled first to a local Goodwill, where we picked up some goodies, but then we drove over to "Space Center Houston". Our badges got us in for free, and so we took a few pictures:

They had a risk and probability exhibit and the below picture was one of the first parts - we had to cross over a beam 'high' across the street below.

They had a shuttle landing simulator, and here is photo of me trying to land the shuttle:

Yes, I did fail each time I tried, but only near the very end and I'm sure the astronauts could have made it out alive... I really want to try to land the shuttle simulator at NASA Ames, on the VMS, or Vertical Motion Simulator, that rides on nitrogen hydraulics. When I toured it last summer, they were testing a new idea for a roto-tilt commercial airliner.

I also saw a model of an astronaut in a space chair with a not-to-scale model of the ISS in the background:

Did you know that the bands around his knees are color coded and signify that he is one of the team leads? This way the ground observers can easily tell who is who during a spacewalk.

And here is an older astronaut in another type of space chair:

This following was on the wall where they have pictures of each shuttle and exploration mission crews. It was sort of inspiring to see all the images of the astronauts and then be nudged to think "hmm...that could be me someday..." I'm still not sure if I would like to be a real astronaut someday, it seems like such a tough job.

What about you - will your picture appear on the wall?