Unfortunately our time in Houston was cut short due to our initial flight being cancelled. This meant we arrived in Houston (and Texas) a day later than we originally planned and we missed the rodeo that we were planning to attend with our friends Kira and Mark. These things happen but hopefully we'll get another opportunity to attend a rodeo.
We spent a lot of the time just catching up with Mark and Kira (friends from dancing) but the other highlight was touring the Johnson Space Center, where the astronauts train for current Space Shuttle missions and trained for missions to the moon. Like everything else over here, they don't do things by halves, the place is huge. We managed to get a tour through (or passed at least) the control room that they used during the Apollo missions (seen above) and some of the shuttle and space station training facilities (below). The only other thing that would have been great to see was the giant swimming pool that is used by the astronauts for training to simulate zero gravity.
We also got a brief introduction on what NASA is planning as the Space Shuttle replacement for trips to the space station and back to the moon. It certainly looks a lot like the old Apollo space capsule. I guess everything that is old is new again. The plan is to take two spacecraft up at a time, one with personnel and the other with the equipment. Going this way allows them to take more into space at a reduced cost (well relative to getting it all on one spacecraft).
From what we saw Houston certainly is a very lovely town and if the opportunity arose, we'd certainly go back for more of a look around.
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