Ziggy Stardust and the Last Shuttle Mission

The last manned shuttle mission to the space station is launching tomorrow morning. 

This makes sense given the climate of the American economy, but is also incredibly sad because 5 year old boys everywhere will be out of answers to that "what do YOU want to be when you grow up?" question. (For the record, when I was asked this as a child, I essentially wanted to be my mother. I wanted to be a Can Can Dancer, drive a purple Chrysler, and have 6 kids but no Husband. Minus 4 children and you have Ma. Terrifying).


Who will save the world when that giant asteroid finally meanders into our orbit? NASA certainly won't be able to just fly Bruce Willis up there at the drop of a hat! 


What about the aliens? How will we be able to converse with the sure-to-be cordial extra terrestrials from the outer realms if NASA isn't investigating the different dialects of Romulan? COME ON!


With no more manned flights, how on earth can they make this happen: 

THIS SO NEEDS TO HAPPEN

Ok, maybe my enthusiasm for NASA stems entirely from a love of Hollywood movies about space (I totes own Armageddon, Deep Impact, Space Cowboys, Apollo 13, and October Sky) but seriously, NASA is like, soooo awesome! 


TJ and I visited NASA last March while we were on the Van Plan and thought it was one of the highlights of the entire trip. But you could tell even then that the prestige that used to come with working for NASA just wasn't there any more. 


It was different when North America had to keep ahead of the USSR in the Space Race or else, god forbid, the Commies take over outer space and then just anyone could go there. 


Regardless of the frivolity the space program presents in the grand scheme of the every day life of North Americans, our tour of NASA was one of the sweetest things i've ever done. It blew my face off with it's awesomeness! 


So in honour of the Shuttle Launch tomorrow, have a peek at the blog post I wrote about our Level 9 tour of NASA and have it blow your face off too...

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We attempted to hit the sack a little bit earlier as we had tickets for the Level 9 tour of NASA the next day, but what with all the beer from last nights Texas Independance Day, and me successfully hooking TJ on the Outlander books (I think I’ve managed to convert nearly every female I’ve ever met into Jamie Fraser-ettes, Muahahahaha!) and the both of us staying up to read, this did not occur. But we forged ahead anyway; I mean who sleeps in on NASA day!

We traversed the 45 minute trip to South Houston without incident and arrived at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Centre with plenty of time to kill before our tour.

I should perhaps explain what the Level 9 tour is. On a regular tour of NASA, you get on a tram, you drive around the buildings, you go in the observation deck levels of all the areas available for tourists, you go in the museum, you see the rockets, and you go home. 

A Level 9 tour is so very much more than that…

First off, look at our lanyards (see pic) they say "Failure is not an option". DARN RIGHT IT'S NOT! So badass...but they also say "VIP" and pretty much let you do whatever you want, short of actually boarding a shuttle mission. 

We ate lunch in the cafeteria that the astronauts, mission controllers, and rocket scientists eat at. It was like a high school cafeteria complete with an overwhelming sense of being far too uncool for the whole situation, though the food was much better than my high school's. When we stepped outside I kept trying to imagine what the facility looked like back in the sixties; the parking lot full of old cars, people smoking like chimneys, and an abundance of polyester. 

We went to the Sonny Carter Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory and saw an actual Astronaut train underwater amidst shuttle sized reproductions and surrounded by divers. I then took a picture of the “Suited Astronaut Parking Only” sign outside before we hopped back in our van and passed a Boeing building with a sign that looked peculiarly like "Strategic Defence Systems", something I thought was chillingly close to Strategic Defense Initiative...or SDI...or STAR WARS (a.k.a. Nuclear Weapons in Space.) Creepy walked the entire length of my spine, back down, and made all the hair on my arms stand straight up. TERRIFYING!

Anyway... 

We went to mission control…but more than that, we went into mission control. As soon as you get off the elevator onto the MC floor, there is an overpowering smell of black coffee that as apparently permeated every nook and cranny of the building. Our tour guide called it “fuel” and we all laughed falsely at his Eurek-y joke. People walk past looking purposeful and incredibly normal though their official NASA badges declaring their purpose in life labeled them as anything else.

Current Mission control in contact with the Space Station

We went into the observation room of the new Mission Control where they were doing a simulation run for the next Shuttle Launch. Once again, I was struck with how average these people looked, regardless of how far from average their jobs are. 

Next we went into the observation room of one of the older mission control rooms, but this one was not doing a simulation. They had a live feed going with the Space Station and we watched as they went into 45 minutes of darkness on their rotation around the earth.

Our final stop in the mission control building was the classic “Green Room” mission control of the Apollo era. We did not go into the observation room here…we went into the room itself! Behind the glass partition was the “other” tour, which I’m sure sat and watched enviously as I pulled out one of the grey office chairs and sat down in front of the Flight Director’s station. It was extremely difficult not to push the many buttons displayed in front of me; I looked up on the walls and saw the mission plaques from all the Apollo flights and the red phone with the direct line to the pentagon and that familiar question kept popping into my brain: where ARE we???

We went into the Vehicle Mock-Up Facility where the Astronauts actually train to pilot the shuttles, rovers, and lunar modules and where NASA engineers were working on the new chariot vehicle. Our tour guide told us that we were not allowed to photograph the Astronauts unless they came up and posed voluntarily. I had two intense feelings that often accompany me when I go into an extremely holy church: 1) the unstoppable urge to swear, and 2) this all encompassing sense that I just do not belong there. I am not an astronaut, I am not a rocket scientist, hell I’m not even a regular scientist; I live in a freaking van right now! Why on earth should I be walking around with people who are so far out of my league as peers…they’re in fucking space! Once again, however, we saw the poor shmoes behind glass on the top level, and both TJ and I had the biggest “too bad suckas” smiles on our faces. Level 9 bitches! Booyaw!

Finally we went inside the Rocket Park, which the other tours do get to go in, but it’s still worth mentioning because it’s the biggest damn thing I may have ever seen. The Saturn V rockets took all of the Apollo missions up, but for some reason Apollo 18 lacked funding and for some reason that rocket never went up. It now sits in a warehouse sized just big enough to fit the rocket…and it’s massive. For example: 

That’s TJ…and THAT’S the freaking rocket! So cool.

Mind = BLOWN. 

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The first mission control we went to observe was actually preparing for THIS upcoming launch. It's hard to believe that we were there watching them run through every possible scenario so they can be ready to launch human beings into space. Unreal. 


Anyway here's a picture of the people who will be going live for the launch tomorrow morning. 

And, of course, some parting words from David Bowie...