4 Bell Boys: An out of this world adventure!

Before heading home from the baseball tournament on Sunday, we made a stop at NASA's Space Center Houston! It was amazing, so cool, AWESOME, and fun to experience space!!

The Johnson Space Center covers 1,620 acres and proudly boasts that "Even outer space is bigger in Texas!"

Our first stop was the Tram Tour that took us from Space Center Houston [the official visitors center of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration] into NASA's Johnson Space Center. It was very neat to ride around on the streets of the campus that is home to space research & observation, planning & engineering for future space endeavors, and astronaut training.

Here is the building that houses the Mission Control Center that connects astronauts to Earth while they are away on a mission... AMAZING!!

Our first stop was the Astronaut Training Facility. The huge building was filled with replica space stations and vehicles that provide a realistic training experience for the astronauts preparing for a space mission. There are "anti-gravity" areas where astronauts can be suspended from cords in their space suits to train for exploration outside the shuttle. In a separate building, there is a huge water training facility that allows for "anti-gravity" training as well!

We passed a variety of buildings with Nitrogen tanks on the outside. The temperature of liquid nitrogen is minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit, and makes the air around it very cold... the cold temperature allows for safe storage of space rocks and particles that have been brought back to Earth to study. While we were touring on the tram, the tour guide explained that when established in 1961, the campus of the Johnson Space Center was built to resemble a college campus to encourage a spirit of continuous education, research, study, and testing. They even encouraged bicycle transportation to minimize traffic on the campus and many of the bikes used today are the original 1960s models!