On Houston

It occurs to me that yesterday I said I was satisfied with a fuel economy of 9L/100km, which is actually pretty bad for highway standards, except (and this will piss off everyone in Toronto who might read this post in the next few days) we needed the A/C (Air Conditioning). I'm so used to sub zero temperatures that when we arrived in Texas to 25 degree heat we had to run the A/C. Ironically, in Toronto an August day of 25 degrees would be almost sweater weather, but right now its sandals and T-shirts!

You don't really realise how bad A/C is until its mid July and you are sitting in stop and go traffic, its 35 degrees and and the A/C is just blasting away - our car has climate control so it automatically goes to full blast just to sustain 21 degrees inside the passenger compartment. Every time the traffic moved there would be no pickup, first gear felt like second, or maybe even third. That one time it hit home, if you can drive with a window open you can really save gas for better things. Last night on the drive from Houston to San Antonio I stopped for gas, not because we were close to needing it, but because I needed a break from driving. According to my Atlas of distances, the drive we made last night was 322km for which an entire quarter tank (about 20L) of gas of used. So I want to know, if a V6 270hp engine can get that kind of mileage (about 6.5L/100km) why can't every car do that on the highway? Is it such an outrageous standard? I don't think so.

Anyway yesterday was Sunday March 2, we woke up, well I woke up, I typed the post that you can see below, from March 1 and showered, twice in fact (I like showers), I even shaved off my side-burns, I ate breakfast. Then Lesley woke up, it was almost noon Eastern time when she got out of bed.

Then, wait for it... we drove! The sad fact is you can't even cross a street in Texas without driving. When I get home I am going to walk (or bike or skate) everywhere for the next month, and I don't care if its snowing, hailing, sleeting, or just plain raining! Anyway we went to the South end of Houston to the Visitor Centre of the Johnson Space Flight Centre.

Here are a few words of advice for space flight nerds (not meaning that as an insult, I totally geeked out when I finally saw what I wanted to see). Don't go to the Visitor Centre, I know, if you haul your rear end all the way to Houston... don't go. Trust me, the drive to the Visitor's centre requires driving South on I-45 to exit 25, then going East on NASA road for about a kilometer or two to the big sign at 1601 NASA road. You make the left and enter a parking lot where you pay $5 to park, then you pay $18.50 to enter the actual centre where there is... well not very much. A mock-up of the Space Shuttle's crew compartment, a model of the new Ares Booster, photos of every flight crew from Alan B. Sheppard right to the most recent Space Shuttle. (Yes there are references to the horrible things that happened in Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia.) Every Shuttle mission patch is on the wall of the food court (the food looks frightful). And they have some real space suits, including Pete Conrad's dirty pants from his EVA on Apollo 12. You will have to watch From the Earth to the Moon to get that joke though. There is a gift shop, that is horribly over priced, but other than that, the Visitor's centre is a good way to feel ripped off.

Here is my advice to space flight enthusiasts, you are on NASA road. East bound, at Point Lookout Drive you are supposed to make a left onto the parking lot of 1601 NASA road, don't. Keep going one more light to Saturn Lane, then turn left. Now make a quick right to the guard booth, ask them if you can see the big rocket. They will point you to a parking lot and a long building. Parking is free, enter the long building and be dazzled. There is, on its side separated at each stage, a full 363 feet Saturn V (that's 5, not the letter) booster from the top of the escape rocket to the bottom of the mighty F-1 engines. The booster includes the Command and Service module although the LEM is not included. So it is basically another Apollo 8, but on its side, without the fuel.

If you enter by the parking lot you can start at the top of the Emergency escape rocket, walk down to the bottom of the F-1 engines and then exit the building. You can see a number of other photo worthy remnants from the early days. A full blown Redstone Missile with a Mercury capsule on the top, just like the arrangement that carried Alan B. Sheppard into the history books. An entire exposed J-2 engine is also outside, remember a modified J-2 engine will be the driver of the new Constellation Project. There is even an H-1 engine like the type used in the Saturn 1 missile. But the thing I found most remarkable was the F-1 engine even had a serial number, it brings home how real everything is. These aren't mock-ups, these could have been the machines that landed Neil Armstrong on the moon, just of quick of which came out of the factory first is the only reason this F-1 is in Houston and not at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean.

Once you are done with NASA, go to the Museum of Fine Art in Houston. They have a Monet and a few Picasso's. Skip the photo's and contemporary stuff, its not worth seeing, frankly its kind of scary. But be warned, as you travel about, if the speed limit is a suggestion in Quebec, then it's an insult in Texas.

Anyway I will have some pictures, but I forgot the SD card reader at home and for some strange reason I cannot copy and paste through the USB port. (I need to reinstall Winblows.)