NASA

Today we had the extreme honor of visiting Nasa as guests of the Director. This week we are hosting a Group Study Exchange from Japan. There are six people staying with different families in the Yoakum area. We are hosting Akio Yoshida, a 37 years old man. Because of the work Rotary does to support NASA we were given the "Presidential" Tour. We first went to the Neutral Buoyancy Lab (underwater scenes from Armageddon) were astronauts get a feel for working outside of the shuttle . There were two Astronauts in the water in full gear.what an amazing site. Next we took a tour of live mock -ups of the shuttle and International Space Station, all very behind the red ropes- back door entrance stuff. Did I say AMAZING! We were able to crawl in one shuttle and sit in the Commander and Pilot seats!! Our last stop was supposed to be the viewing room of the new Mission Control room but at the last minute they allowed us to go in both the old and new Mission Control- the real room-with live picture and data streaming on the front wall. The old MC room (from Apollo 13 fame) looks exactly like you think with the huge green computers the size of washing machines. What an amazing once in a lifetime event. By they way if you don't think NASA is all that important do yourself a favor and do more research.