Space Center Houston turns an introduction to NASA and the space program into a maze of videos and interactive games. The official welcome center for the Johnson Space Center, Space Center Houston mixes play with learning in an unstructured, fun environment.
Commonplace now, the first dozen rocket launches from Cape Canaveral and Cape Kennedy astounded a world gathered around television sets. Since 1965, Mission Control in Houston has guided the astronauts through the heavens. The visitor center opened in 1992 as part amusement park, part scientific museum, and part tour guide for the NASA facilities.
Divided into seven main sections, the Space Center thrills, inspires, educates, and entertains any age of visitor. Inside the front door is a playground of exhibits and hands-on games that simulate different aspects of manned space travel. There are slides, machines that create the feeling of weightless, and all kinds of devices to test one’s imagination and dexterity.
In the Starship Gallery, the film On Human Destiny takes guests through the highlights of nearly 40 years of the space exploration. This is a great start to a day of exploration. The gallery includes three actual space capsules.
Briefing officers in the Mission Status Theatre provide guests with up-to-the-minute information on current flights from NASA facilities around the world. The giant video monitors above the stage can relay real time pictures of space shuttle crews. Across the building, the Space Center Theatre is the largest IMAX screen in Texas.
Tucked in a dark corner of the 183,000-square-foot building are booths where visitors can try to land the shuttle or retrieve a satellite through computer simulation. A large stage in the area is a cut-away mockup of the space shuttle with a briefing officer explaining how the astronauts handle routine activities like eating, showering, and sleeping.
For a look behind the scenes of the Johnson Space Center take the tram tour past the rockets sitting outside like giant pieces of yard art. In addition to seeing the actual Mission Control Center, the tram tour takes visitors to see a space shuttle mock-up and, during Spring Break and holidays, the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory where astronauts learn to work in weightlessness.
Just in time for Spring Break, Space Center Plaza hosts “Grossology: The (Impolite) Science of the Human Body.” With more than 20 interactive displays and games, the science project gone wild speaks to the 9-year-old boy within us with a double megaphone. Find out why farts are a sign of a healthy body and a high-fiber diet and that urine is cleaner than our faces and doesn’t stink until bacteria begins to break it down and creates ammonia.
Computer games test the wits of small hands while others line up to play a pinball game of the digestive tract. One of the most realistic stations is a place to experience the smells produced by the human body or you can walk through a nose to see how it works. Nigel Nose-It-All, a robotic faucet-head, explains more than you ever wanted to know about snot.
The exhibit answers questions about the human body in a way that is both entertaining and, well, gross. It’s hard to describe snot, vomit, gas, and scabs without being a little bit of both. Grossology will be at the Space Center through May 1, followed by Robot Circus through the summer.
The Johnson Space Center opened in 1963 as the Manned Space Center (MSC) in what was then a cow pasture 25 miles south of downtown Houston. Gemini IV in 1965 was the first flight to be controlled from Houston and was decommissioned in 1996 with the opening of the new Mission Control Center next door to support the Space Shuttle and Space Station missions. The Johnson Center is also a training center for astronauts who build and fly on the International Space Station missions.
Space Center Houston is owned and operated by the Manned Space Flight Education Foundation Inc., and is not federally funded. All of the exhibits are actually NASA equipment or realistic models created specifically for the center. Much of the design of the permanent exhibits was created with the help of Disney engineers.
The entire attraction is self-guided with the visitors free to wander at their own pace, but most guests spend four to six hours at the center. The JSC tram tour alone takes 75 minutes, and the film Inside the Space Station is 50 minutes long. Tickets are $15.95 for adults and $13.95 and $10.95 for children, which includes everything except lunch, a ride in the Morphis motion simulator, and $4 parking.
The center opens 10am-5pm weekdays and 10am-7pm on weekends. At 1601 NASA Rd., the space center is in Clear Lake, south of downtown Houston off of I-45. For information, call 281/244-2100 or print out a $2 off coupon from their Web site at www.spacecenter.org.
562nd in a series. Day Trips, Vol.2, a book of Day Trips 101-200, is available for $8.95, plus $3.05 for shipping, handling, and tax. Mail to: Day Trips, PO Box 33284, South Austin, TX 78704.
This article appears in March 15 • 2002.
