NASA - Houston TX

Monday 9:30am, I’m standing in line at Heathrow and I’m looking nervous. I mean I don't look 'Terrorist nervous' surely… I should have shaved this weekend. Its just the case I have never been to Heathrow before and this is my first visit to the USA. Confused about where to go, have I done my Visa right? Have I forgotten something? I’m clenching onto my passport and travel documents like a helium balloon, I’m smiling at everyone but I think its just making everyone feel uncomfortable.

Don’t get me wrong, I love flying! As a teenager I was a cadet and lucky enough to fly in several RAF aircraft. A few years back I clocked up about 12 hours in a Cessna and I still remember the feel of the controls, learning to take off and land. I was also lucky enough to fly at night over my home town. Going through the cloud level the sky and the Earth looks completely different and I’m excited, tomorrow I will be visiting the Johnston Space Centre where NASA develops new technologies and trains its astronauts. I know many of its early test pilots were flyers in the Navy. Once you know the principles of flight and the basics to propulsion you may find that flying feels completely safe and natural. As we hit a pocket of turbulence the plane dips, I do my sexy voice and nervously giggle but luckily no one hears.

NASA in Houston is huge, it employees over 1400 staff. The look of it is just a host of commercial buildings, the streets have real names, from the outside nothing of interest. Except for the huge cylinders (about 25m by 10m) with warnings that they contain nitrogen and helium. The visiting centre has a range of exhibits and lots of games for the kids, but I’m looking after my friend's niece and nephew so its ok for me to play.

The main Astronaut Training Suite is as long as a football field. From the walkway above it is again filled with huge cylinders. But these are mock ups of the space station, where the crew can learn the feel of the controls and run simulations before their mission starts. There are space buggies laid out and a strange climbing frame structure that is used to simulate zero gravity. The lady conducting the tour also points out the Robonauts, robots that are being developed to take the pressure away from humans, by fulfilling dangerous or repetitive tasks. Their gold heads look like something from 70s SciFi and as someone points out to me some look a little like Boba Fett.

The International Space Station (ISS) is a joint scientific venture, combining resources and tech from the worlds leading space authorities. Its goals are far broader then I realised. A big factor in exploration being possible for humans is understanding how our bodies will be effected by long journeys in space. We learn about what life is like, how they exercise. The research into why people's vision deteriorates quicker when they are in Space for long periods of time. There are experiments being conducted into diseases, in conditions that could not be replicated on earth. The station itself acts as a viewing platform, not just to help us understand our planet as I assumed, but also to see the effects of natural disasters in real time and relay this information to those managing ground responses.

We see some rockets from the early days of NASA and the tour concludes with a look at the Saturn V rocket, all three sections laid out horizontally. It is spectacularly large and I have to take pictures of it in stages as we walk around it. Everything looks so Retro and I like reading about Gemini7 pilots Borman and Lovell who were the first to rendezvous with another craft in space. As interesting as the tales of the moon landings are, more so the engineering that went into developing a module that could operate in the moon's 1/6th gravity or no gravity at all. In getting those people safely home. Things have not always gone right, the staff of NASA wore black arm bands for a whole year after the fire that killed the crew of Apollo1 on the lunch pad. There have been a number of deaths that I have read about. Hundreds of people have been involved in finding out what went wrong and its sad to think of those who died having getting so close to fulfilling their dreams.

The day before, on the plane I remembered something very special. Those moments when you are a kid and you are sitting in the park or the beach and you look at the sun. Grown ups tell you its dangerous but if you just look for a few seconds you can see the curves of this tiny ball of flame. You learn as you get older it is actually a hundred times bigger then Earth and about a hundred million miles away. Scientific discoveries, pictures, data: we now have a better understanding of how beautiful and fierce our universe really is. We all come from the same place but there are men and women who have the passion, drive, knowledge and skill to be chosen as astronauts. They probably stared at the sun too. I admire the bravery of those who reach out into the sky as far as they can and grab whatever experiences they can find.