Space Center Houston visit

Last week, while daddy took some time off from work and Matthew's school was closed for Christmas, we decided to visit Space Center Houston. At the entrance, there were two jets which follow the Space Shuttle upon re-entry from space to the landing site.

Also, there was a shell of the new Orion capsule which will, in a few years, take astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).

As soon as we got inside, Matthew saw this MONSTER play structure and just had to climb it! It must be at least 5 stories tall.

After he got his fill of climbing and playing in the ball pit, we went exploring the rest of the center. First, he visited the space shuttle cockpit.

It is built to scale with the first level being the crew compartment and the cockpit located on the second level. Here is Matthew in front of the cockpit. Still do not know why he had this grin on his face while I was taking pictures (he was grinning in all three)...

To the side of the shuttle exhibit was an actual space shuttle engine. Of course I had to get a picture of Matthew standing in front of it. Cool but not as impressive at the Saturn V engine but that came later on the day...

Factoid: If the space shuttle engine could propel a stream of water, at full throttle the stream of water would go up for 38 miles! Amazing.

Next, he visited a gallery with all sorts of space suits.

He got bored of the space suits and other memorabilia at the gallery rather quickly (I have to keep remind myself that he's only three!), so he spent another half hour climbing. He eventually found the Legos castle exhibit (sorry, no picture of that).

After spending about 3 hours inside Space Center Houston, we left to visit the rocket park at Johnson Space Center. There we saw the famous Saturn V rocket which would have gone into space if the Apollo 18 mission was not canceled. A building has been built around it about 3 years ago to preserve this piece of history -- the last of its kind. Here are a few pictures to give you a sense of the size of this monster 360 foot long rocket.

Take a look at the bottom first stage rocket. Each one of the first stage engines produces over 1.5 million pounds of thrust; all five have for a combined total of 7.6 million pounds of thrust! WOW! All that lift capability was necessary to carry men and equipment to the moon.

To give you a sense of size of each of these rocket engines, here is a picture of us in front of the exhaust shroud.

Here is a picture I found on Wikipedia of all five engines of the first stage. Cool, eh?

Outside, there were a Mercury rocket as well as an experimental Gemini rocket.

Before leaving NASA for a late lunch, we visited the longhorn cattle ranch at JSC. This may be the first time Matthew has seen longhorn cattle and no this was not due to any planning on behalf of his Aggie mommy. While there, he kept saying "Do not drop Bongo", a reference to an earlier trip to the zoo where grandpa dropped Bongo into the elephant exhibit -- see here.

A trip to NASA would not be complete without a visit to the McDonald's strategically located within 100 yards from NASA. This is Matthew's first visit to this intricate McDonald's playground. You can only imagine how many times he went into this toddler-sized habitrail!!!