NASA Space Center, Houston, Texas

In November 2011, we traveled from Atlanta to Houston to visit with Josh, Karen, Ellie & Jason for Thanksgiving week. We did not take our trailer since we stayed at Josh & Karen's. While there we visited the NASA Space Center. What a fantastic place to visit. There are two sections to the facility, and Jim has an interesting story about that and his sword cane, which I will tell later in this blog.

NASA's space and science exploration learning center has more than 400 things to see and do. They have the largest collections of spacesuits and Moon rocks on public display in the world. Space Center Houston is the premier authentic and immersive learning center for science and space exploration. They  provide the public a chance to be a part of NASA.

Pete Conrad Apollo 12 suit

One final time, an Apollo mission lifted off for a rendezvous with another celestial body. One final time, its command module splashed down in the ocean. In between, astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt made history, becoming the last two men to step foot on the Moon. The two were joined by Ronald Evans on Apollo 17, the last Apollo mission to the Moon. This final mission also contained a first. Schmitt was the first scientist to travel into space. Schmitt, who went by “Jack,” earned a doctorate in geology from Harvard University in 1964 and had worked for the U.S. Geological Survey before undergoing astronaut training.

Dubbed “America,” it’s one of 12 Apollo command modules on display in the country. Cernan, who had flown in Moon orbit in Apollo 10 but had yet to step foot on its surface, was overjoyed by the experience. “And, Houston, as I step off at the surface at Taurus-Littrow, I’d like to dedicate the first step of Apollo 17 to all those who made it possible,” Cernan said as he stepped out of the Challenger Lunar Module. “Jack, I’m out here. Oh, my golly. Unbelievable. Unbelievable, but is it bright in the Sun.”

The mission landed at a particular spot in the Taurus-Littrow lunar valley to use Schmitt’s talents as a geologist. “We had three dimensions to look at with the mountains, to sample,” Schmitt told NASA oral historian Carol Butler. “You had the Mare basalts in the floor and the highlands in the mountain walls. We also had this apparent young volcanic material that had been seen on the photographs and wasn’t immediate obvious, but ultimately we found in the form of the orange soil at Shorty crater.”

In all, the astronauts brought back 243 pounds (110 kilograms) of lunar samples and spent 75 hours on the surface of the Moon. While there, Schmitt and Cernan traveled 30.5 kilometers in the lunar rover and set up a sixth automated research station. Schmitt’s participation in the mission was echoed in the Space Shuttle Program, which provided an opportunity for many other scientists to follow him into space.

Cernan, who was the last person to stand on the Moon, left Earth’s lunar satellite with these words, “I believe history will record that America’s challenge of today has forged man’s destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus Littrow, we leave as we come and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17.”Apollo, Moon-landing project conducted by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the 1960s and ’70s. The Apollo program was announced in May 1961, but the choice among competing techniques for achieving a Moon landing and return was not resolved until considerable further study.

Apollo-Soyuz Docking Module Trainer

In the midst of the Cold War, a low-orbit handshake ended the space race once and for all. In July 1975, the Russians and the Americans teamed for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.

The last human-crewed U.S. space mission until the Space Shuttle Program, an Apollo spacecraft docked with a Soyuz spacecraft on July 17. Three hours later, Apollo Captain Tom Stafford and Russian Captain Alexey Leonov shook hands through the docking port, helping to forge a détente between the two superpowers.

Those 44 hours the two craft spent docked laid the groundwork for much of the next wave of space exploration. Without this cultural cooperation, a marvel like the International Space Station couldn’t have been possible.

Test Ejection Seats

The first few Space Shuttle Program missions that flew hardly resembled missions at the end of the program’s historic run.

Through the course of the unprecedented program, NASA invented a whole new way to fly the orbiters back to Florida with the shuttle carrier aircraft program. NASA officials also had to work out the logistics of flying the orbiters. One safety feature included in the original design was quickly scrapped. During the first four shuttle flights, the shuttle orbiter Columbia was equipped with a pair of ejection seats: one for the commander and one for the pilot. Vance Brand, the commander for the first four-person crewed mission STS-5, made the decision to remove the two “bang seats.”

This decision was based on studies of World War II bomber pilots who were able to eject while the rest of their crew was left behind. All of those survivors had to deal with the grief and regret of saving themselves while abandoning their crewmen.

F-1 Engine

F-1 Engine

A cluster of five engines like these provided the power for the first stage of the Saturn V launch vehicle during the Apollo-Saturn test flights, manned flights to the Moon, and the launch of the Skylab orbiting laboratory into Earth orbit. The engines powered for 2-1/2 minutes lifting the Saturn V to an altitude of about 41 miles and a speed of about 6000 miles per hour. Each engine weighed 15,650 pounds and developed a thrust of 1,500,000 pounds.

The first three lunar landings were within 70 miles of the Moon's equator. The Apollo 15 Mission was over 450 miles north of the lunar equator in an area called the Hadley-Apennine Mountains -- a mountain range higher than the Himalayas. This rock is a basalt from this mountainous area, and is a medium coarse grained igneous rock. An igneous rock is one that has formed by the cooling of molten lava. This sample's mineral content includes brown pyroxene, yellow olivine, and white plagioclase. The rock's texture shows that it is similar to the lavas on Earth that erupt from Hawaiian and Icelandic volcanoes.

Dave Scott and James Irwin were the firs astronauts to use the electric-powered lunar rover to explore the Moon and collect numerous lunar samples, including this rock. The two men spent 67 hours on the Moon and travelled to three different geographical sites. This particular rock is a breccia (brek-sha), which formed when meteorites hit the Moon's surface about 4 billion years ago. The high pressures and temperatures that resulted from the meteorite impacts literally remelted, crushed and mixed the layers of the original lunar crust and welded the existing rocks and soils together to create breccias. The Moon rock contains glass fragments and rock minerals consisting of pyroxene, with smaller amounts of plagioclase and olivine.

Though humans can theoretically walk or run nearly as fast on the Moon as on Earth, bulky spacesuits made movement awkward for the Apollo astronauts on the lunar surface.

Enter the Lunar Roving Vehicle. Rovers were taken to the Moon’s surface (and left there) on the last three Apollo missions. Astronauts Dave Scott, Jim Irwin, John Young, Charlie Duke, Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt all practiced on the Lunar Rover trainer displayed at Space Center Houston in preparation for those missions.

The rover has no steering wheel or brakes, since neither are needed on the airless lunar surface. It was started, steered and stopped by a single control located between the seats.

The electric-powered rover could travel at almost 10 mph (15 kph) and had a range of about 55 miles (89 kilometers).

It was equipped with a TV camera, which recorded the astronauts’ exploration of the Moon and liftoff of the top half of the Lunar Module when the astronauts left the Moon.

On the Apollo 17 mission, the rover was driven a total of about 22.30 miles (35.89 kilometers) in a span of about three hours. The rover itself weighed about 460 pounds (208 kilograms).

NASA constantly looks to proven designs as it pushes forward with deep-space exploration. This rover trainer is no exception. Echoes of this lunar rover design can be seen in the Mars rovers such as Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity.

Because of this, Space Center Houston’s Lunar Roving Vehicle trainer located in Starship Gallery acts as a window to the past and a guidepost to the future.

There are two sections to the NASA Center and to get to the other one we had to take a tram. To enter either section you obviously could not have any knives or other so-called "weapons" on your person. However, to get into the second section, we had to go through a security radar.  Josh was concerned that Jim's sword cane would set off the radar, and get Jim in trouble. So Jim joked around with the attendant saying that he had bolts in his knee and that would probably set off the radar. (He actually does have bolts in one knee from ACL surgery he had back in 1989.)  They also joked about Jim having metal in his head as well. The story was set regarding the bolts and of course, the radar did go off but they let Jim through with his sword cane and did not check him further since he had warned them already about the bolts in his knee.