NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX

The Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX is the administrative, mission control and astronaut training center for the United States manned spaceflight program.

We spent most of today at the center touring the facilities and visitor center.

The original Mission Control Center handled all of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions. The oringinal two IBM computers had only 400 KB of memory which is one reason all of the engineers during those early flights kept their sliderules handy. Most of the math calculations were done the old fashioned way with a sliderule, something that is hard to find today.

The Saturn Rocket was last used on the Apollo
17 flight. The next Saturn Rocket would have been used for Apollo 18 but that program ended once the Space Shuttle became available. The Saturn Rocket is now on display. It was originally out in the open but NASA has built a building around it to protect it.

The current program deals with the International Space Station and a mockup of each of the space station modules is housed in a special building used for training and mission problem solving. Sixteen nations are participating in the International Space Station Program.Tomorrow we travel approximately 300 miles to Junction, TX. We hope to stop in San Antonio for lunch at the River Walk (Sharon's old stomping grounds while she was in basic training at Fort Sam Houston). Type to you tomorrow.