Up early, again to shower and cram as much breakfast in our mouths as possible and take some bagels and fruit with us for the journey so we didn't have to buy food out today. We packed up and checked out around 9.30 the receptionist was kind enough to store our bags and gave us key cards for the swimming pool later on as we are leaving until 10pm for to catch the bus.
We caught the 249 to NASA space centre, it took just over an hour! What is it with all these attractions being completely out of the way of everything!? And the bus coming back goes every hour, that's it! They don't like to accommodate for their tourists and transportation!
We got to the ticket desk and Ross thought he seen a sign for no food or drink in the museum so we went around the side of the building scoffed out faces of all the food because we didn't want to buy food out! Haha we were so full, I couldn't eat my yoghurt I felt sick full of food! We were the only ones there, by the time we had rammed the food down our faces there was a queue! Typical. Got to the bag check - no OPEN hot food or drinks allowed so we could have taken it in anyways!! So now we are food-less by 11am! Great. We got in there it was very SPACEY but a lot of it was for kids, a little like techniquest which was a little disappointing. We found a queue of people so joined in, realised afterwards it was for the tram tour around NASA. The first was full so waiting in line for the next one, not to be loosing out again. The novelty photos were mandatory for security purposes, great! Make this one a super cheesy one so if we pinch something from NASA our mugshot will look hilarious plastered on tv!
The tram took us around the NASA campus, from the schools where they train to be technicians and Astronauts, where they build rockets and the machines that land on the moon, the space outfits and where they are planning the obrien trip into deep space. First stop was mission control, we didn't realise we were going into the actual historic mission control where they controlled all of the launches into space, such as Apollo 11 and 13. Everything was the original, we say in a viewing area that was there in the 60's the viewing area would have presidents, politicians, astronaut families and the queen had been there, tom hank went there and watched how they control things for his role in Apollo 13. There were no keyboards, just screens with dials, they used one computer to control things there and that was downstairs and held around 20megabytes maximum. How crazy that they would control things outside of earth with such minimal technology! Every team that goes on a tour get together with a designer to produce their badge. Every badge is different as it represents the reasons for the trip and no trip is for the same purpose. Once they have returned and the tour is complete their badge will be pinned up on the mission accomplished wall. There were two screens either side of us, one with the cameras from the international space centre which is orbiting earth every 90minutes so they get to see 16 sunrises and sunsets per day. WOW! There are 3 Russians, 2 Americans and 1 Japanese on it currently. The astronauts were having a conference call with mission control whilst we were there; the new mission control centre, opened in 1992 was directly below us and we could watch them on the screen, it was incredible! Such big accomplishments had happened in the room in front of us! Next stop was the building room (play/learning room) it is 3 football fields big and 8 stories high. It holds replicas of capsules that fly the astronauts into space and the capsules which they live in up in space, I think it's the size of 6 bedroom house! The engineers were working on a space suit whilst we were there. They have what's called a pogo, they attach you to and you train how to work in space whilst floating and bouncing in the air, there are wheelchairs that are commonly used for disabled people with ceryblpasey to restrict them from moving, this helps them get used to working without moving much as the space suits weigh hell of a lot!
Whilst in space astronauts have to exercise 3 hours per day so that their muscles don't come rely relax, that then reduces their rehab time to around 3 days once they arrive back on earth.
Another part of the building workshop is where they are making the little robots and cars that are going to be going out onto the surface of the planets they land on which will put the astronaut in less danger and they will be able to discover more territory. Their latest machinery is like a holiday home, there is everything in the life like trailer home that will allow an astronaut to survive for 2 weeks, so when they arrive on mars ready to discover the planet and try to build a community on it they will be able to do some from these capsules. There was also a life like space man that was hanging up, he was enormous; around 8 foot he must have been! He is able to flick through a finely paged book without tearing the pages and cut fine things accurate. This will be another thing used so that the astronauts don't have to go out of the capsule whilst on the planet. Our last stop was the Saturn vi rocket, it was sat in a humongous unit, it was magnificent, I couldn't believe how big it was. Once back to the museum we had a look around the wall of fame, showing all the groups that had taken the trip up to space, there wasn't much else to see in the museum after that so we went and a photo with the rocket that toured America on top of a jumbo plane because it has retired from it's space journeys and I don't know if it's historical because it carried Apollo 11 and 13 missions as the attraction wasn't open until 2015.
We managed to get the 2pm bus back instead of waiting another hour to head back. We went and chilled by the pool and jacuzzi all afternoon from around 3 until 8. We decided to go downstairs and get a bite to eat out we went to a little cafe which was Indian/pizza it was a little weird but nice and mello.
There are so many homeless people around, everywhere! I knew it was a problem over here but it's gone way beyond my imagination of the actual amount there is! They are on every corner near enough.
After food strolled back to the hotel, watched the news for a little and checked our bags out.

New Orleans time!