The grandest nerdery of them all...NASA!

While in Houston, our ATOP group was fortunate to receive a special private tour of NASA Mission Control. Dave's sister-in-law Beth and her husband made it all possible.

We first visited the Shuttle Control Center. Since the shuttle is on the ground at the moment, the room was empty, allowing us to roam around.




Next, we visited the observation room for the ISS control room. The astronauts were sleeping at the time, but there was still cool stuff to see, such as the live track of the ISS (It was over South America when we were watching).



Our final stop in the building was the old mission control room, where Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions were handled. It was amazing to stand and sit where so many historic missions were controlled! Here's the flight control desk (you saw Gene sitting here in Apollo 13):



Once we left the building, we also stopped by the rocket display. The Saturn V rocket was being restored, but we did get a good "Right Stuff" shot in front of the F-1 engine (1,500,000 lbs of thrust!):



Our tour of NASA was an amazing experience! A big thanks to Beth, Hai, Delene and Lark for making it happen!

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