Check-out and Tours

This morning we returned to Ellington Field one last time to unload our experiment and get everything packed up. We were able to get on the plane shortly after the morning briefing and quickly got all the experiments unloaded. We packed up all our boxes as we waited for our guide from AD Astra to show up and see our experiment. When he got there I explained how the system worked and we all talked to him for a while. Once we were all checked out and packed we headed back to the hotel for a while. We all relaxed until early afternoon when we went over to Rocket Park to meet buses for a tour. The buses had to wait a little while for people to show up so I went inside the building where the Saturn V is now housed.


I still can't believe how massive that rocket is. It's amazing that they were able to build such an impressive machine with the technology available back then.

Outside the Saturn V building there was a Redstone and an Atlas rocket. The Redstone looks tiny compared to the Saturn V.


We loaded the buses and headed first to a building where they housed two of the large vacuum chambers that Apollo and other spacecraft were tested in. The smaller of the two chambers was 25 ft. in diameter whereas the large one was 50 ft. in diameter and around 90 feet tall.


It was enormous! The chamber is pumped down using liquid helium panels behind the chamber walls along with several cryogenic pumps which both cool the chamber dropping the pressure. The door on the chamber weighs 4 tons but can be moved by a single person since it's so well balanced. Generally, however they use hydrolics to move the door.

After the vacuum chambers the buses took us over to Mission Control. We first saw the Mission Control Center where the shuttle is controlled.


There is a mission currently going on right now so everyone was in working. We were very fortunate to get to see it since they usually do not allow people in when there is a mission in progress. The shuttle is on it's way back to Earth as it undocked from the ISS yesterday. You could see the shuttle crossing the screen and we saw it pass over Michigan while we sat there. Next we went to the ISS Mission Control Center. We were also very fortunate to see them switching shifts. Generally there is an hour overlap between controllers when there are two people on the same station. We arrived at the end of this hour as some of the controllers were leaving for the day. The room was set up very similarly to the shuttle Mission Control, however we noticed it was better lit. Some of the consoles are different in this room, but generally everything else is the same.

Finally we went to the historic mission control were we were able to sit at the actual consoles the Apollo mission controllers sat at.

On the wall there was a mirror given to mission control by Apollo 13 that was meant to symbolize the reflection of all the controllers that helped to get them all home.

On the wall in all the control centers, the patch of each mission controlled from that room was displayed. Our guide, who was a main room FIDO (Flight Dynamics Officer), also showed us the pneumatic messaging tubes that were used to send messages between rooms during those days.

The tour ended with us visiting the mock-up facility where they had models of all the ISS modules, Soyuz and the shuttle.


This is an area where astronauts can train on mock-ups that are almost identical to the actual module in space.

At the very end of the room there were several robotic mechanisms that are used. We again got lucky and were able to see the mechanical arm in action.

The guide said she's only ever seen that twice. It was definitely an exciting tour. Our guide pointed out where the WETF and centrifugal training facilities were along with some of the other facilities as we drove back to rocket park. It's quite impressive all the facilities that are available here down in Houston.