USA Trip - Part 9 - Houston & Galveston

Having set off in midmorning towards Houston we knew that some kind of feeding stop would be in order. There were many small settlements enroute but Julia had it in mind not to become an extra in the next remake of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. So was determined to remain close to the highway and ignore any homegrown eating establishments. I must admit I could understand little of this fear but I went along with it. So from about eleven we started to look out for a recognizable restaurant chain close to the highway that we were on. About this time we started to see signs for BUC-EE’S, some way ahead of us. It appeared to me to be an aggressive advertising campaign announcing the opening of a Beaver themed restaurant. As we got closer to it, and neither Chilis nor IHOP had made a counter bid for our custom, we resolved to eat at BUC-EE’S and encourage their new venture.
I hasten to add I was not entirely fooled by the signs, I was not expecting large creatures similar to the family featured in “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” to be serving but I did expect a restaurant. Some more intrepid travelers than us may know already it is a huge service station, and worse, there is nowhere to sit, unless you count your car. Having looked this chain up they have branches all over Texas and have established quite a cult following. We would have preferred hot food and a comfortable seat but we settled for a sandwich and another bucket of fizzy drink each. We also tried the homemade fudge and bought some which we finally ate back in England.
We had learned the trick to locate Best Western hotels which often stand up by the freeway and therefore have an address which our satnav refuses to deal with, look up the hotel on the internet and expand the map to see a local road then offer that to the satnav. We therefore navigated successfully across Houston, no mean feat in itself, and found the hotel on the south side of the city convenient for the airport.
Having checked in we decided that we were feeling idle so we lazed in the outside hot tub and made ready to watch TV, being Wednesday there was an NBA double header to look forward to. Only the TV seemed determined to put problems in our way, the channels did not match the guide and, worse, there was no ESPN. On the way out to the pool area we reported this and the desk lady told us someone would look into it.
As we returned from our relaxation by the pool we met a guy getting into the lift with a new TV for us and once he had installed it we were good to go.
We felt unwilling to drive so at about 6.00pm I was sent out on a scouting mission, I walked about five blocks in one direction and had only three restaurants to report, two were sea-food and the third was a nice looking Mexican which announced “Wednesday is Fajita Night!” normally a good thing but unfortunately that was exactly what we had eaten the previous night.
One block from the hotel, as I headed back I came upon an army-surplus shop, it was closed but parked outside was a rocket launcher complete with rusted missile – I know Americans defend their right to bear arms but surely this is several steps too far for anyone!
On the other side of the hotel I could see the golden M in the distance but I hoped for better prospects before I reached there. There was another Tex-Mex restaurant then I came upon a Chinese Buffet which looked promising, I progressed past it but nothing else was on offer. I checked the Chinese on the way back and discovered that it shut at 8.30pm on weekdays and stayed open to only 9.00pm at weekends. If this was to be our choice then we needed to move ourselves!
Julia agreed the decision and we were at the buffet by 7.30ish. There were only the staff, us two and a party of four guys who looked like they were working in the area. We were soon patrolling the serving area and the food was great. It turned out that the working guys were from Newcastle and were on a job fitting glass for two weeks. Newcastle is my home town and the accent always brings my mother to mind although she claimed not to have any such accent herself. It was great to chat with them and we left at a similar time to them but I doubt they were as content to watch basketball as we were on our return to the room.
The free buffet breakfast was fine if a little too soon after the Chinese buffet for us to be able to do it full justice. The waffle maker did not require lubrication and we each managed a waffle along with other bits and pieces.
We were determined not to waste our final full day so we decided on Galveston, which we had enjoyed greatly when taken by Ken and Margaret Ehlers previously, and if time permitted, the Houston Space Museum. Since our last visit to Galveston time had passed and things would have naturally changed but also the island had suffered Hurricane Ike.
As we crossed onto the island it did not seem familiar, we both remembered houses built on the beach which were wooden and on stilts, it looked like the cars parked under the house but we saw nothing like that. We followed the coast road to the end of the island where we watched large tankers coming and going, the only strange thing was that, whichever direction they were headed, they were riding high in the water as if they were empty. From there we found our way into the town and got parked, the meters were not working so all on-street parking was free. The central area of the town was familiar but everywhere there was evidence of the damage done by Ike, we have a photo of a plaque on a wall which shows the water height to be over six feet from the ground. The houses we remembered were smashed and similar houses have not been rebuilt. The risk of flooding is obvious everywhere, the electricity lines are ten feet off the ground and appear to enter older buildings at that level.
We then set off back towards Houston and the Space Centre. The satnav did a good job having “googled” the address before we left the hotel, but it brought us to the exit gate rather than the entrance and we had to do a loop. It took us into an estate of houses and for a while I thought it had cracked up on us but we duly arrived. Our first debate was if it was worth paying entry as the centre was due to close at 5.30pm and it was now 4.15pm. We were impressed to be told that the tickets bought in the final two hours would be valid for the following day also; it seemed like a good deal. Having bought tickets we entered the centre, at the door we were urged to catch the last tram of the day at 4.30. This took us into the research and development facilities which are all for real. We saw the genuine control room which had guided the Apollo 13 crew back when they looked doomed. Incidentally this gives me the chance to recall the time we were watching the film and Julia remarked that it was hard watching when you know the ending, I agreed with her but she later admitted that she thought that they failed to get them back. We have also watched the film “Titanic” and perhaps she was looking forward to the arrival in America!
The missions are still controlled from Houston even though all the launches are now from Florida. The guide in the control room pointed out that when the Apollo missions were flown the total computing power available in their five? mainframes was less than a digital camera. His most memorable comment was the Mission Controller had total command and was the only one authorized to talk to the crew aboard the space shot. He was at times battered by several sets of information or questions to be sent to the crew and the way he was able to prioritize them was solved early in the programme, the mission controller was always an astronaut. We were shown round a training area where astronauts were practising with various equipment in simulated zero gravity although much of that is done elsewhere using a huge water tank. We finished at the rocket park where we were able to appreciate the size of the launch vehicles.
We found the exhibition hall emptying as the tram returned and we were ushered out of the complex and we set off back towards the hotel in the chaos of the Houston rush traffic. Since we had eaten nothing since breakfast and the roads were a nightmare we took the first chance to pull off for a Chillis restaurant. Here we had a “two meals for $20” deal and found the roads had eased by the time we traveled on.
Julia checked in on line for our flight home and for the first time we realized how late we were to take off, it gave us another whole day to spend in the area.
The following day we ate breakfast, checked out of the hotel into the first rain of the trip. Our original plan had been to visit the San Jacinto Battlefield and with it the battleship Texas but two things were against this plan, the already mentioned rain, we did not relish arriving wet for our flight, and the fact that in our rush at the Space Centre Julia had not seen moon rock! As a geologist this meant a lot to her so we modified our plans and headed back to the warm and dry Space Centre.
From very early on in our tour of the Space Centre it was obvious that the space programme was emotionally fueled by the JFK presidency and then assassination. We saw the wooden lectern from which Kennedy announced the start of the space race and we watched film presentations of the history of the programme all of this made us aware of the commitment made by the astronauts and their families.
For me the timeline of the space programme had the largest impact, most missions were made up of astronauts returning to space mixed with rookies who became the veterans later down the wall. The tragedies hit hard mainly due to the terse descriptions and there are more of them than I remembered.
Apollo 1 – the crew consisted of astronaut Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, (the second American astronaut to fly into space) astronaut Edward H. White II, (the first American astronaut to "walk" in space) and astronaut Roger B. Chaffee, (a "rookie" astronaut on his first space mission). They died together in fire during a test, with the Command Module mounted on the Saturn 1B on the launch pad just as in the actual launch, but the rocket was not fueled. This test was a simulation, going through an entire countdown sequence. The most shocking thing I noticed about the incident was this paragraph - A hold was placed on the entire Apollo program while an exhaustive investigation was made of the accident. Although a specific initiator could not be determined, the final report of the investigation board blamed the fire on arcing. It was further exacerbated by the large quantity of flammable materials in the cabin and the oxygen enriched atmosphere.
They never found the cause for sure but they still had people prepared to go ahead with the programme.
Since the early days of non-returning space vehicles the programme moved to the Space Shuttle which returns to earth landing similar to a plane. There have been two Space Shuttle disasters.
The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster occurred on February 1, 2003, when the it disintegrated over Texas during re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, with the loss of all seven crew members, shortly before it was scheduled to conclude its 28th mission, STS-107.
The loss of Columbia was a result of damage sustained during launch when a piece of foam insulation the size of a small briefcase broke off the Space Shuttle external tank (the main propellant tank) under the aerodynamic forces of launch. The debris struck the leading edge of the left wing, damaging the Shuttle's thermal protection system (TPS), which protects it from heat generated with the atmosphere during re-entry. While Columbia was still in orbit, some engineers suspected damage, but NASA managers limited the investigation, on the grounds that little could be done even if problems were found.
The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred on January 28, 1986, when it broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, leading to the deaths of its seven crew members. The spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of central Florida, United States, at 11:39 a.m. EST (16:39 UTC).
Disintegration of the entire vehicle began after an O-ring seal in its right solid rocket booster failed at liftoff. The O-ring failure caused a breach in the SRB joint it sealed, allowing pressurized hot gas from within the solid rocket motor to reach the outside and impinge upon the adjacent SRB attachment hardware and external fuel tank. This led to the separation of the right-hand SRB's aft attachment and the structural failure of the external tank. Aerodynamic forces promptly broke up the orbiter.
The crew compartment and many other vehicle fragments were eventually recovered from the ocean floor after a lengthy search and recovery operation. Although the exact timing of the death of the crew is unknown, several crew members are known to have survived the initial breakup of the spacecraft. However, the shuttle had no escape system and the astronauts did not survive the impact of the crew compartment with the ocean surface.
The acceptance of such risks and the cool courage involved deserves great credit and our respect.
Julia not only saw but touched moon rock but was shocked to discover that her belief that the moon rock was named Almalcolite after Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins, the Apollo 11 crew, was not recorded.
We spent much of the day around the exhibits and in due course we set off to delivery the car back to the Houston Car Rental Centre. It was still familiar to us as we had finished our previous tour of Texas in the same way; the Dollar attendant simply visually checked the car and scanned it in order to check that we were fully paid up and in charge of the correct vehicle. We were then able to catch a shuttle to the airport and check in our baggage. Our flight was scheduled overnight and we were due to arrive back at Heath Row at 11.30am. It all worked out as planned.