Let’s just call this the “Alabama Edition” of a This ‘n That post, in honor of my time in Huntsville this week…
— 1 —
You can tell this is an aerospace town from the moment you arrive. The airport was full of ads for Boeing, Orbital, ATK, etc, etc. There was even a huge NASA ad! Yay.
— 2 —
I stayed at a hotel right next to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, which has a lot of cool things on display including two — TWO! — Saturn V rockets. One is lying on its side in a building like the ones in Houston and Florida, but one is upright. It turns out the upright one is just a mockup, but it’s still hugely impressive. It also acts as a sort of unintential beacon. You can see it from miles away. You could probably navigate by it. “Take a right at the rocket…”
— 3 —
There are four of us visiting from Houston, and yesterday afternoon our hosts took us on a tour of the ISS Payloads Operations Integration Center. Like I mentioned yesterday, this is another mission control but for experiments instead of the station itself. Pretty cool! I like the flags on the ceiling, although apparently the controls refer to it as their version of a disco ball.
— 4 —
Marshall Space Flight Center is located on Redstone Arsenal, a large Army post that’s also home to much of the Army’s aviation and missile work. The Arsenal was created in the 40s and manufactured chemical weapons for World War II. In the 50s, it was home to Wernher von Braun and his team of German rocket scientists brought over to the U.S. after the war to work on missiles for the Army. His team launched the first U.S. satellite in 1958, and later developed the Saturn V that took us to the moon.
All that said, it’s basically an old army post — and thus has a huge field of bunkers like the one above that would have served as fall-out shelters if needed. Kind of sobering to see.
— 5 —
Yesterday we had lunch at a place out in the country called Grandmother’s House. It is literally in an old house, and is literally owned and operated by a grandmother (with help from several other grandmothers too). There were chickens running around the front yard. I had meatloaf, brussels sprouts, creamed corn, and cornbread and it was all delicious.
— 6 —
The bed in my hotel room is seriously one of the comfiest, coziest hotel room beds I’ve ever had.
— 7 —
On Wednesday night after having dinner with my Houston coworkers, I wanted to stop for coffee on the way back to my hotel. (We are all at separate hotels, so I was on my own at this point.) I fired up Google Maps and followed it blindly. It kept saying I had arrived, but I didn’t see anything. It took me a ridiculously long time to figure out that it was indeed trying to send me to a Starbucks…the one located inside a SuperTarget.