Space from Houston to Cape Canaveral: A Space Geek’s Journey

A Detour to Houston—and a Date with Space

On our journey to Florida, we decided to take a little detour and spend a couple of days in Houston. After all those miles on the road, we needed a break. Houston offered the perfect combination of birding, exploring, and one attraction I absolutely could not pass up: the Johnson Space Center.

I’ve been a space geek for as long as I can remember. In fact, I’m pretty sure I missed my calling as an astronomer. I’m fascinated by just about anything involving space, whether it’s real science or science fiction. Give me Cosmos, Contact, Star Trek, Star Wars, Lost in Space, or even Ancient Aliens, and I’m completely hooked.

My fascination doesn’t stop at the television screen. I own an 8-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope, and I frequently point it toward the heavens to see what I can find. There’s something incredibly humbling about standing outside on a dark night, looking through a telescope, and realizing that the tiny speck of light you’re seeing may be a planet, nebula, star cluster, or galaxy millions of light-years away.

So, when we realized we would be passing through Houston, a visit to the Johnson Space Center wasn’t really a question. Of course we were going!

For me, this wasn’t just another stop on the road. It was a chance to get up close to a piece of the space program that I had spent a lifetime watching, reading about, and dreaming about. And I couldn’t wait to see what was behind those doors.

The Astronaut Space Training Tour

It was a cold, gray, windy day, and the temperature hovered around 40 degrees. We quickly realized we hadn’t dressed for the tram tour. The trams are open wagons with rows of seats, and the wind cut right through us as we rode around the property. We had only sweatshirts, but we considered ourselves lucky compared with some of the other visitors.

Several girls climbed aboard in tank tops. They apparently chose fashion over warmth. As the saying goes, “It’s better to look good than to feel good, Dahling!“. As Billy Crystal put it in You Look Mahvelous.

I have to admit, those girls looked great, however, I think they discovered that looking mahvelous doesn’t keep you warm!

First Stop

The first stop took us to the working government facility. We walked the length of the building along an elevated path that gave us a bird’s-eye view of the Astronaut Training Facility below. NASA astronauts train here for current missions, while scientists and engineers work on the next generation of spacecraft and other vehicles that will carry us farther into space.

Then we spotted something that immediately caught our attention. Two astronauts actually training on the anti-gravity machine, dressed from head to toe in full space gear. We came to see the facility, but suddenly we found ourselves watching real astronauts prepare for their next mission. How cool is that?

Saturn V Rocket

The next stop took us to a building that housed an actual Saturn V rocket—the tallest, heaviest, and most powerful rocket ever flown. Standing beside that massive machine made us feel incredibly small and insignificant.

Photographing the Saturn V proved quite a challenge. Its enormous size made it almost impossible to capture in a single frame, and none of our photos came close to conveying the sheer scale of this incredible rocket. We included a few shots in the photo album link at the end of this blog, but trust me, you really need to see the Saturn V in person to appreciate just how massive it is.

Houston, we have a problem

We felt disappointed when we learned that the tour didn’t include Mission Control headquarters. This iconic room handled all mission communications once each rocket cleared the launch tower in Florida. From here, flight controllers monitored missions, communicated with astronauts, and helped guide them through some of the most critical moments in spaceflight history.

Of course, this was also the place where the infamous Apollo 13 call came in: “Houston, we have a problem.”

For a lifelong space geek like me, standing inside Mission Control would have ranked among the highlights of the entire visit. Unfortunately, we had to settle for knowing that we stood just a short distance from one of the most important rooms in the history of human space exploration.

Photo Credit to Houston Mission Control Website

Museums, Exhibits, and Moon Rocks

After the tour, we spent several hours exploring the museum and scrutinizing everything it had to offer. We wandered through fascinating exhibits, examined an incredible collection of space artifacts, and watched films in theaters that brought the history of human space travel to life.

The museum also houses the world’s largest collection of moon rocks. Seeing actual pieces of the Moon up close felt almost surreal. I could have spent the entire day there, soaking up every bit of space history I could find.

Cape Canaveral, FL – SpaceX Launch #1

As luck would have it, we got to see two SpaceX launches during our time in Florida. Both launches carried no astronauts, but each rocket carried 22 Starlink satellites into Earth orbit. We watched the first launch from the beach in Cocoa Beach, where we had a fantastic vantage point across the Cape Canaveral peninsula and several of the launch pads.

When the countdown ended, the Falcon 9 roared to life and shot into the sky. Within seconds, it passed over our heads and headed south along the Florida coast. Watching a rocket launch from the beach already felt incredible, but the real excitement came a few minutes later.

The SpaceX Falcon 9 has a remarkable trick up its sleeve: SpaceX can recover and reuse its expensive first stage. Instead of letting that massive booster fall into the ocean, SpaceX turns it around and flies it back toward Cape Canaveral for a landing.

Miles above us, we watched the first stage separate from the rocket and begin its incredible journey back toward Earth. It turned around, headed for the Cape, and landed almost exactly where it started. Then the sonic boom rolled across the beach, giving us a thunderous finale to an already spectacular sight.

Watching a rocket launch into space and then seeing part of it return and land right before our eyes ranked among the most impressive things I have ever witnessed.

Port Canaveral, FL – SpaceX Launch #2

We watched the second launch from the Rocket Launch Viewpoint at Port Canaveral. This location gave us a much more direct view of the launch pad, as you can see in the photo on the left. We stood there with a clear view of the rocket as it blasted into the sky, and once again, the sheer power of the launch amazed us.

Unfortunately, we missed the best part of the first launch—the landing. This time, the Falcon 9 first stage detached and headed toward a landing platform far out in the ocean. We could only imagine the excitement of watching it touch down, since the distance kept the landing out of our view.

Still, seeing two SpaceX launches during our Florida trip gave this lifelong space geek quite a thrill!