Space Center Houston

[Hotdog]

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting the museum at JSC while in Texas on a business trip. It was my first time in the Lone Star State so you know the space museum was at the top of my list of places to go! I made sure to stop by "the barn" where the Saturn V is displayed free-of-charge. Walking around the barn, with no A/C on a hot Texas day made me appreciate the wonderful facility we have in the Davidson Center at Sprocket! Not to mention the collection of rockets, as JSC only has the Saturn V, Little Joe, and Mercury Redstone.

Speaking of collections, over at the museum, they have the best collection of space suits I've ever seen! They also have the "Faith 7" Mercury, Gemini 5, and Apollo 17 spacecrafts in their exhibit hall, which is hidden behind the kids play area where you first walk in. There's also a complete Skylab you can walk through, a lunar scene with a LRV, a nice display of moon rocks, and a full-size shuttle crew compartment with both mid-deck and flight deck.

Here is a gallery of photos I took there. Glad I brought along my tripod, as the exhibit hall was very dimly lit.

http://smg.photobucket.com/user/hemiman ... JSC%202014

[p51]

FYI, your photobucket link is clicked for private use only, the public can't see it.
Space Center Houston is, in my opinion, the lesser of the 3 biggest visitor centers. KSC is clearly the best as it's the largest and has the tours out past the VAB to pad 39.
Huntsville is almost as impressive as Kennedy. Houston, compared to the two former noted ones, isn't all that in comparison. It's neat to see, but the visitor center is mostly geared to kids. The Saturn V is in a building which isn't nearly as impressive as the Davidson Center nor the Saturn V display at KSC. But it is very impressive nonetheless.
If you go to Houston, be sure to go to San Jacinto battlefield, where the war of Texan independence ended. The tower is amazing, as is the WW1 battleship, USS Texas.

[Hotdog]

Whoops! Thanks for the heads up, I have set it to public so the pics should be viewable now.

I agree, the Houston center is heavily geared towards kids, luckily I was warned by friends before I left so I was expecting it. Seems many of our fellow space geeks in the area refer to it as "Space Center Disney". At least they had two separate gift shops, a large one full of all the kids stuff, and a small shop with the more serious space items.

I only had one day on my trip to fool around the Houston area before going to my event in Austin, so I didn't get to do any of the other cool historical stuff. Maybe next year!

[p51]

Seems many of our fellow space geeks in the area refer to it as "Space Center Disney".

Good one, I'd never heard that before. Accurate!

I only had one day on my trip to fool around the Houston area before going to my event in Austin, so I didn't get to do any of the other cool historical stuff. Maybe next year!

Yep, you gotta see the USS Texas if you have any interest in naval warfare.
Also, you gotta go back and see the 747 SCA and orbiter mockup from Kennedy once that's together.