Drive 2010 - Days 4 and 5

Day 4

I spent nearly the entire fourth day of this drive travelling from Big Bend to Houston. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that on I10 in the western half of Texas, the speed limit is 80 miles per hour. This really made the hundreds of miles drop away quickly.

I did stop briefly in San Antonio to visit the Alamo. I wasn't familiar with the details of that story previously, so it was a very informative experience and I'm glad I took the time to go there. The most significant thing I took away was a better understanding of why Texas sided with the Confedaracy during the US Civil War. This had always seemed a little odd to me, because Texas has a significantly different culture both from the other southern states and from the other southwestern states. I could have imagined Texas seceding on its own, but something about it joining the Confederates didn't seem to fit.

What I learned from my visit was that prior to becoming a US state, Texas was a state of Mexico^[1]. In Mexico of that era there was a breakdown between those who favoured the central government being the dominant force, versus those who believed in the individual states retaining more direct control over their own affairs. When this resulted in armed conflict, the President of Mexico (Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna) led the Mexican military into the separatist areas in an attempt to put down the resistance and bring them back under control of the central government.

This may sound somewhat familiar, because it's very easy to frame the broad history of the US Civil War in the same terms^[2]. Seeing the site that's become a symbol of Texas' defiance against Santa Anna made me realize how the people of Texas in that era would have viewed the Union and the Confederate States.

The Alamo, even on a weekday, was packed with visitors, to the point that taking any pictures would have been a waste of time.

San Antonio itself seemed like an interesting city, and I wish I'd left more time in my schedule to visit it. The architecture (at least in the part I was in) still has a very Mexican feel to it. Eventually, I'd like to go back to Texas to see more of it, as well as the area around Austin^[3].

By the end of the day, I'd reached Houston and found a place to stay within a few miles of the NASA facilities.

Day 5

I started the morning of the fifth day of this trip visiting Space Center Houston, which is the visitors' complex built up around NASA's Johnson Space Center (the "Houston" in "Houston, we've had a problem").

I have mixed feelings about Space Center Houston. There are a lot of artifacts of US spaceflight here. Visitors have the chance to see the historical Mission Control room, restored to its appearance during the Apollo era, as well as one of the unflown Saturn V rockets - finally cleaned up, preserved, and contained in its own building instead of rusting in the open air as it was previously.

On the other hand, it's clear that none of this was enough to attract as much tourist money as the people running it wanted, and so most of the actual space history has been pushed into the back, with center stage given to vaguely-related entertainment for children. In the main building during my visit, nearly all of the floor space was occupied by a Star Wars-themed playground - basically an enormous jungle gym with Clone Wars branding^[4]. I'm all for making it a fun experience for younger visitors, but I felt like very little effort was made regarding the actual spaceflight history.

While I'm glad I stopped there, I was not surprised when NASA didn't select JSC as the new home of one of the retired Space Shuttles.

Tourist Photos: Spacesuits and Flight suits

Prototype "hardsuit" (see below)

Deke Slayton's Apollo-Soyuz Test Project suit

Mike Collins' bio-isolation suit from Apollo 11

NASA in-flight coveralls

John Young's spacesuit from the first Space Shuttle flight

Charles "Pete" Conrad's Apollo 12 spacesuit

Judy Resnik's T-38 flightsuit

Russian Strizh ("Swift") spacesuit

NASA EVA spacesuit

The first photo is of a prototype "hardsuit" design. One of the challenges of spacesuit design is that there is nothing outside the suit to provide resistance to the air used to pressurize it. In the very early days of research into human spaceflight, it was actually believed that a "soft suit" was impossible to construct - old books at the schools I attended as a child claimed that only "hard" suits would ever be successful, to the point that the designs depicted had mechanical claw hands because even a soft glove component was supposedly out of the question. While researchers eventually came up with several ways to build "soft" suits, both designs have their advantages, and work on both types continues. See Drive 2010 - Day 11 for more examples from Kennedy Space Center.

Date Shot: 2010-07-09
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon AFS-DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 EDII
Filters: Schott BG38
Date Processed: 2010-12-24
Version: 1.0

Tourist Photos: Space Shuttle Mockup

Mid-deck, facing aft

Flight deck, facing aft

Flight deck, facing fore

Mid-deck, facing fore

In this mockup, the front and back of the flight deck and mid-deck are split from each other to provide more space for visitors. The black-tiled sections of the floor represent the space added to what's in a real Space Shuttle.

Date Shot: 2010-07-09
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon AFS-DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 EDII
Filters: Schott BG38
Date Processed: 2010-12-24
Version: 1.0

Tourist Photos: Space Shuttle Mockup Console Details

Aft flight deck controls

Standard switch panel

Video tape recorder and other controls

Details of some of the consoles in the mockup.

Date Shot: 2010-07-09
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon AFS-DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 EDII
Filters: Schott BG38
Date Processed: 2010-12-24
Version: 1.0

Tourist Photos: Space Shuttle Mockup Flight Deck Panorama

Panorama - RGB

An attempt to capture the overall look of the forward flight deck. Some stitching seams were unavoidable, so I favoured maintaining the consistency of the control panels over e.g. the seats.

Date Shot: 2010-07-09
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon AFS-DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 EDII
Filters: Schott BG38
Date Processed: 2010-12-24
Version: 1.0

Tourist Photos: Work Area

ISS modules

Wide view of the Full Fuselage Trainer

Full Fuselage Trainer forward fuselage

New lunar rovers

The white vehicles in the last image are mockups or prototypes of a pressurized lunar rover intended for use with the cancelled Ares/Orion moon landings. I believe the international space station modules in the first shot are either functioning duplicates or training versions of modules already in orbit.

Date Shot: 2010-07-09
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon AFS-DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 EDII
Filters: Schott BG38
Date Processed: 2010-12-24
Version: 1.0

Tourist Photos: Work Area Panorama

Panorama - RGB

Date Shot: 2010-07-09
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon AFS-DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 EDII
Filters: Schott BG38
Date Processed: 2010-12-24
Version: 1.0

Tourist Photos: Saturn V Building

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Date Shot: 2010-07-09
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon AFS-DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 EDII
Filters: Schott BG38
Date Processed: 2010-12-24
Version: 1.0

Tourist Photos: Saturn V Panoramas

Panorama - Bottom

Panorama - Top

A couple of attempts to capture the awe-inspiring scale of the most powerful rocket ever flown.

Date Shot: 2010-07-09
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon AFS-DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 EDII
Filters: Schott BG38
Date Processed: 2010-12-24
Version: 1.0

Tourist Photos: Rocket Engine Components

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Date Shot: 2010-07-09
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon AFS-DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 EDII
Filters: Schott BG38
Date Processed: 2010-12-24
Version: 1.0

Tourist Photos: Mission Control Panorama

Panorama - RGB

This is the "historical Mission Control" room, which is no longer used and has been restored to its appearance during the Apollo era.

Date Shot: 2010-07-09
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon AFS-DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 EDII
Filters: Schott BG38
Date Processed: 2010-12-24
Version: 1.0

After about three hours at Space Center Houston, I got back on the road and drove east until I arrived in New Orleans.

Louisiana is the most oddball state I've ever visited. I don't know if it's the French influence or some other factor, but I was really struck by how differently certainthings are done there. The most obvious of these ways the layout of roads: in all of my driving there, I don't think I saw a street with traffic in both directions outside of New Orleans' downtown core - everything was split up into one-way traffic. I'm sure this is great for reducing traffic fatalities, but it was a nightmare in terms of navigation. If I realized I'd gone too far down a particular road, I'd have to take a left or right and hope that there was a corresponding road going the other way somewhere in that direction. I would highly recommend that visitors from out of state bring or rent a sat-nav system.

Louisiana was also the state where I realized I was going to have some trouble doing the sort of photography I'm interested in, because the terrain is so flat. Except for artificial structures, there are very few places to get an expansive landscape shot from. I spied a handful of good spots from locations like bridges, but none of them allowed parking or pedestrians. Someone doing conventional, handheld photography would have a much better time.

On the topic of bridges, the one I took into New Orleans itself was amazingly terrifying. I think (but am not sure) that it was the Huey P. Long Bridge. I haven't been able to find any photos online that properly convey the white-knuckle experience of driving over it. Imagine the attack on the Death Star from Return of the Jedi - a swarm of tiny vehicles travelling at extremely high speed through a narrow and unpredictable skeletal metal framework, where any mistake will result in fiery death. One important difference is that the bridge (unlike the Death Star) is extremely old - it looks like at any moment an enormous section may finally give in to the rust and fall away.

The Huey P. Long Bridge - Part 1

A sign of things to come

This is a screencapture from jmcsmomma's YouTube video "not too happy about being on the Huey P Long Bridge". Would you trust a bridge with this sign over the on-ramp? Note that while the video makes it clear that at least a couple of the passengers are terrified of the bridge, the video itself fails to convey why this is unless the viewer has also driven over it.

The Huey P. Long Bridge - Part 2

The Huey P. Long Bridge

Artist's impression of the Huey P. Long bridge.

Date: 8 July 2010
Starting Mileage: 31101
Ending Mileage: 31733
Distance Travelled (Day): 632 miles / 1019 kilometers
Distance Travelled (Trip to Date): 1544 miles / 2490 kilometers
Fuel Purchased (Day): 21.587 gallons / 81.716 liters
Fuel Purchased (Trip to Date): 47.299 gallons / 179.046 liters
Average Fuel Economy (Day): 29.3 miles per gallon / 8 liters per 100 kilometers / 12.5 kilometers per liter
Average Fuel Economy (Trip to Date): 32.6 miles per gallon / 7.2 liters per 100 kilometers / 14.0 kilometers per liter

Date: 9 July 2010
Starting Mileage: 31733
Ending Mileage: 32177
Distance Travelled (Day): 444 miles / 716 kilometers
Distance Travelled (Trip to Date): 1988 miles / 3206 kilometers
Fuel Purchased (Day): 13.032 gallons / 49.331 liters
Fuel Purchased (Trip to Date): 60.331 gallons / 228.378 liters
Average Fuel Economy (Day): 34.1 miles per gallon / 6.9 liters per 100 kilometers / 14.5 kilometers per liter
Average Fuel Economy (Trip to Date): 33.0 miles per gallon / 7.1 liters per 100 kilometers / 14.0 kilometers per liter

Footnotes

1.	The history of Texas is complicated. I am glossing over some important details here that you can read about elsewhere.
2.	Although how accurate such a framing would be, I leave as an exercise for the reader. Keep in mind that there were some critical differences in the details of the two conflicts, to the point that governor Sam Houston resigned rather than swear an oath to the Confederacy.
3.	Robert Rodriguez, in particular, has filmed on a lot of interesting locations there that I'd like to see in person.
4.	Yes, that's right, it wasn't even something tasteful like The Empire Strikes Back.