JSC, Houston, Texas
JSC, Houston, Texas
NASA's Johnson Space Center occupies a unique, perhaps mythical place in
history. Houston is the U.S. home of manned spaceflight. How
often did we hear the name of this city, the call sign for everything
based on the ground, when men were in space? Houston means
everything: Earth, control, NASA, doctor, boss. It's tough to
imagine space voyagers calling any other city (apart from Moscow,
of course). "Hello, Cleveland - this is Apollo, how do you
copy?" Nope, just can't quite imagine that. The politics of
former U.S. President Lyndon Johnson got the space center to
Houston in the first place, so it is no surprise the former
Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) was named for him after his death
in 1973. My last visit was in 1971, right after the Apollo 15
mission. needless to say, quite a bit has changed. This 2005
visit combined my childlike fascination with an adult space
enthusiast's enhanced appreciation. Truly, this was an
unforgettable day in Space Geek Heaven. I dressed the part in my
Apollo Program logo golf shirt, and slipped on the Omega
Speedmaster Professional - aka, the Moon Watch.
This virtual account follows Space Center Houston's (the JSC official visitor's center) top-of-the-line "Level Nine Tour." If you want to see some of manned spaceflight’s most awesome sights, and experience the insider's look, then sign up for one of just 12 seats, just three times a week. It even includes lunch at the astronaut cafeteria: so-called because this chow hall is right next to the flight crew ops buildings. For someone raised on, enamored of, or just plain seriously interested in NASA history – this is Willy Wonka’s Golden Ticket.
Space Center Houston is quite a bit different from
the old visitor's center on the main JSC campus. The older locale
was a series of exhibits adjacent to the Teague Auditorium, where
NASA still hosts big news conferences. SCH is a modern space
playland, geared toward families with children, with hundreds of
ways to tweak the science spark in young people. The modern theme
park approach, complete with motorized tram rides around the
Center, cleverly packages a working space center as a fun
location. NASA's educational outreach is world class (I was
fortunate to help out a bit in the NASA Langley/Virginia Air and
Space Center's Education Resource Center), and all apsects of
space science are shown with rides, toys, displays, and
interactive exhibits. Of course, I went straight back to the
space suit exhibits.
The Sonny Carter Training Center, named in honor
of the Navy flight surgeon astronaut who died on a commercial
airline flight in 1991, is actually located over at Ellington
Field. This airport is also an Air Force Reserve installation,
and where NASA bases their famous T-38 trainer aircraft. The NBL
replaced the older Weightless Environment Training Facility
(WETF), in JSC Building 29, which was not much larger than an
Olympic-sized swimming pool.
Texans like to claim everything is big in Texas. Well, this swimming pool certainly is! The size and depth of the NBL facility is hard to grasp at first: it spans 202 x 102 feet (62 x 32 meters) and 40 feet (12 m) deep! That will hold 6.2 million gallons (23,500 cubic meters) of clear, warm water. You can actually get nitrogen narcosis, "the bends," if you come up out of such deep water too quickly! The gentle sloshing and strong chlorine smell reminded of my high school pool - except we never had a full-sized Space Shuttle cargo bay on the bottom of ours. Huge cranes reposition the various satellite, Space Station, and Shuttle components - and smaller cranes are even required to put the fully-pressure-suited crew members into the water.
So after a couple of decades of hoping, I
was finally privileged to have firsthand views of real
astronauts, in real mission training. The day 
of my July 2005 visit, two crew members, Dr. Scott
Parazynski, and Dr. Dafydd Williams (Canadian Space Agency) were
hard at work 30-some feet deep, prepping for their STS-118
mission. This is a Space Station assembly mission, and they were
chatting away about just how to attack the big box assembly at
the bottom of the pool. They were surrounded by a safety and
support team in scuba gear. The crew typcially spends 8-10 hours
in the water for every hour of spacewalk time. We could see them
clearly in the transparent water (image: above left center), and
had very good looks at their work via closed circuit video
(right). I kept saying "that is so cool" over and over.
It would have been even cooler to take a dip in the pool and help
them out with the task.
Never underestimate a common-looking structure on
a NASA installation. Very few buildings have names or
designations, just numbers. A windowless three story white
structure (left) might just be the hurricane-resistant,
incredibly well-wired Mission Control Center (MCC)! Look close in
movies like Apollo 13, and you'll see the large number
"30" on the side of a building. How about across the
street, where boring-looking Building 31 (near right) is home to
the world's supply of Moon rocks! This was part of the old Lunar
Receiving Lab, where samples were returned and studied. Even the
Heaquarters building (far right), a nine story office block with
the Center Director's office on top - from which the Level Nine
Tour derives its name - looks like it could be just any corporate
building built in the mid-1960s.
Welcome to Mission Control, or officially
"Mission Control Center" (MCC). There are actually four
Flight Control Rooms (FCR): one for the Space Station, one for
the Shuttle, one back-up, and one "Historic." Holy Cow,
we're in the viewing gallery above the pinnacle of NASA
operations. Yes, you can these engineers, managers, and
functional teams at work on TV. But, when you see them chatting,
leaning against the consoles, and eating lunch while still at
their desks - like any other working person - it's real. The
International Space Station (ISS) was drifting across the coast
of South America, somewhere near Equador - and we saw it on the
big map, and via the live video camera facing Earthward. The
mission time clocks (left center) are counting away, including
the estimated-time-to-launch of STS-114, the all critical
Return-to-Flight mission of Shuttle Discovery. We were just over
2 days from the then-scheduled 13 July 2005 launch - which
unfortunately didn't take place. The Flight Director is right
below us (near left), and she is instant text messaging with
someone. I wonder what's the issue? is it mission critical? Is a
colleague asking what she wants for lunch?
The day we visited, the main MCC used for Shuttle
missions was busy with pre-STS-114 mission preparation, and
installation of a new plasma screen in the VIP gallery. So, the
view was understandably indirect, peering over workmen, and a bit
less dramatic than the ISS room. However, the feeling of
professionalism, sweating the details, and trying to implement a
tough Return-to-Flight task was hanging in the air. Only NASA's
best get to sit here. Each chair has perhaps 10 personnel backing
him/her, all of whom are hoping to work their way up to that
seat.
Twelve
lucky daily ticket holders walked across the creaky, often
polished floorboards on the 
third floor of monolithic Building 30,
and entered THE ROOM. For a short quarter hour, we took in
the experience that is "Historic Mission
Control. " THE ROOM…" the Mission
Operations Control Room (MOCR). Space history was made
daily on these worn carpets, at these pea-green metal 
consoles, in front of these huge rear
projection screens. We practically raced around the
consoles, marveling at the mission emblems (left) beginning at
Gemini IV, through the Apollo voyages, to Skylab, and ending with
a decade worth of Shuttle missions. The digital camera was
clicking at maximum speed, and no one missed the opportunity to
have his or her photo taken in the Flight Director’s seat
(right)!
I
was on the far side of “Holy Crap, I’m standing in
Mission Control,” when I suddenly stopped and closed my
eyes. I took a deep breath through my nose. Here is
the stale 
sweetness of tobacco; the musk of aging
fiber and tile; the slight scorch of ozone from decades old
electronics; and maybe even a hint of thousands of cups of
coffee. All around me are historic images of
telemetry data, Saturn V launches, moonwalks, and the curtained
viewing gallery where the famous and important watched the
action. And yet, the consoles are empty. The rows are
devoid of headset cables, styrofoam cups, slide rules, and
endless piles of NASA manuals. The men and women who ran
the whole show, to the Moon and back, are long gone. And
suddenly a little whiff puts in me back in their company.
Maybe Gene Kranz is asking the “Trench” for a quick
assessment; over there EECOM is tapping on his console; perhaps
up the tier Recovery is frowning over a weather report.
Here were long tedious hours hunched over blurry monochrome
displays, and thunderous cheers punctuated with lit cigars when
mission crews stepped onto the deck of an aircraft carrier, after
a half million mile trip. Here the dream of our
civilization took place. From a windowless, white stone
cube on a flat piece of east Texas, a unique team watched over
Moon Men in their Moonships.
CONTINUED
