AN AMERICAN ROAD TRIP TO THE FINAL FRONTIER
A drive from Orlando to Phoenix gives Jeremy Taylor a chance to explore the history of space travel before trips beyond Earth become a reality
Strapped into a seat in the centre of what Nasa calls the multi-axis trainer, or MAT, I am getting a taste of what space travel really means. This gut-churning ride for would-be astronauts is guaranteed to put your head in a spin. Upside down, inside out, I am now regretting my waffle and maple syrup breakfast at every twist. Astronauts use the sphere-shaped machine to prepare for tumble spins during re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere and I now understand why the men and women who travel to infinity and beyond really are the best of the best.
MAT is just one part of the Astronaut Training Experience (ATX) at Kennedy
Space Centre, Florida (kennedyspacecenter.com). It offers ground-based travellers like me the chance to sample some of the gruelling tests real-life astronauts face en route to weightlessness.
The half-day programme includes a ride in a shuttle simulator and micro-gravity harness — a thrilling taste of what candidates experienced in the hit BBC series Astronauts: Do You Have What It Takes?
For real astronauts such as Sam Durrance, this would have been just another day at the office. The scientist spent 25 days in space on two missions to the International Space Station. Now he is one of eight former spacemen employed to greet ATX visitors.
DINING WITH SPACEMEN
Durrance has degrees in physics and astrogeophysics, so what are the most common questions people ask? “They want to know how we go to the toilet in space — and what the food tastes like. Neither answer is very edifying.”
Durrance and his Nasa colleagues take turns to appear at the daily Lunch with an Astronaut event, which costs $86.99 per person at Kennedy. The buffet is a chance to meet a real-life space hero — but book ahead.
Otherwise Kennedy’s newest attraction is
Heroes & Legends, which relives the pioneering days of space flight. A 4D cinema brings the lift-off experience to life and visitors can stand within an arm’s length of a Gemini 9 capsule.
A sinister Redstone rocket — America’s first ballistic missile — hangs from the ceiling, while directly outside the hall are even more spacecraft in the Rocket Garden. Time your visit for dusk and the giant structures are spectacularly lit up against the night sky.
Kennedy is the obvious launch pad for my drive across the south to find the best spacerelated tourist venues in America. The road trip will cross seven states and end at Flagstaff, Arizona — where astronauts trained to drive the original lunar buggy back in the 1960s.
LET’S DO LAUNCH
If you think the idea of space tourism is still pie in the sky, Nasa is already working alongside Elon Musk’s SpaceX on a mission to send two unnamed civilians around the moon. Musk wants to make space travel as easy as hopping on an aeroplane.
I timed my space journey to coincide with a rocket lift-off at Kennedy but the mission was delayed. Launches are visible from almost anywhere on the Florida peninsula, with details posted at kennedyspacecenter.com.
Seeing my dismay, the concierge at the Ritz-Carlton Orlando did his best to explain the experience: “You can feel your heart pumping — the thrust from the engines vibrates through the landscape. There’s a flash of fire, the ground seems to move and then the flame soars into the sky.”
Suitably enthused, I set off on the first leg of my trip. From Orlando it’s a nine-hour drive to the John C Stennis Space Centre — a rocket test base on the Mississippi-Louisiana border where the Apollo spacecraft were developed.
I was driving a Lamborghini Huracán, the closest I could get to a road-going rocket ship. It has air conditioning and cruise control, unlike the Corvette Stingrays most astronauts were given to drive back in the 1960s.
New Orleans is a good base from which to visit Stennis. It was late afternoon when I reached the Big Easy but already my mobile was buzzing with two emergency flood alerts. The deluge was not long coming. Soon the I-10 motorway that runs on stilts above the city became a car park as drivers took refuge from the water below.
TO INFINITY ... AND BEYOND
The next day, it took less than an hour to reach Stennis. The Infinity Science Centre
(visitinfinity.com, entry $16) is the official visitor complex and offers an educational approach, compared to the theme park razzmatazz of Kennedy. A guide confided that the best time to visit is when a rocket engine test is taking place, though that is pot luck because there is no official schedule.
Everything about the science centre is big, including the engine stage of a Saturn V rocket used to power Apollo. Standing underneath the booster, it was difficult to imagine something this huge ever getting off the ground.
Exhibits and visitor buildings are spread over a large area, so the centre offers a bus tour of the main sights. Don’t miss the Space Gallery, which houses a display of space suit technology — some look quite comical, as if they date back to The Jetsons.
I arrived in Houston five hours later. Nearby Johnson Space Centre is where Nasa’s mission control directs flights made from the launch pad at Kennedy Space Centre 1,000 miles away.
The visitor complex — Space Centre Houston (spacecenter.org, entry $29.95) — has an overwhelming array of attractions, all dwarfed by the 747 aircraft parked outside with a shuttle replica loaded on top. The main foyer is also packed with interactive, hands-on exhibits, such as rocket and shuttle simulators.
Starship Gallery includes the Apollo 17 command module, scorched from its re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere. Another area has a collection of moon rocks, a lunar rover training vehicle and a full-sized Skylab training module.
STRANGE OBJECTS IN THE SKY
The highlight of the visit was a chance to step inside the shuttle replica that sits atop the 747. To appreciate the scale, I recommend walking the stairs up the eight-storey access building. There is a lift, if that sounds like one step beyond.
Driving west again through San Antonio and onwards along the Mexican border, even the scenery in this part of Texas felt a little space-age. The huge skylines and desert have turned the sandscape into an other-worldly sort of place.
That evening, in the V6 coffee bar at the laid-back Gage hotel, in Marathon, I was told about strange lights that appear over the desert in neighbouring town Marfa. Everybody seemed to have an alien story to tell here.
As if to prove it, just across the border in New Mexico is the International UFO Museum
(roswellufomuseum.com, entry $4.50) in Roswell which is famous for a spate of UFO sightings since 1947, when a strange, saucerlike shape appeared in the sky during a thunderstorm. The locals have embraced everything extraterrestrial ever since — culminating in the old cinema remodelling itself as a UFO museum. The building claims to be a UFO research centre, too, but some of the exhibits have come straight from the set of a 1950s sci-fi movie.
The next day, I visited the McDonald Observatory, near Fort Davis. In the wild backwaters of Texas, the dome-like structures looked like they could have landed from outer space. The weekly Star Parties (£10) are hugely popular and offer an educational tour of the galaxy. There are limited spaces for these evening sessions, so make sure to book ahead at mcdonaldobservatory.org.
EARTH’S LUNAR LANDSCAPE
If you have ever wanted to see a constellation up close, this is the place to do it. Just a peek at the surface of the moon through the enormous Ritchey-Chrétien telescope left me in awe of what these incredible machines can do.
The final 1,300km drive west on the busy I10 took two days. Temperatures topped 40°C and the road often disappeared in an illusion act caused by the heat haze. My final destination was Arizona — for good reason.
The rocky landscape outside my window at the Phoenician hotel near Phoenix was a clue. In 1967, just up the road from Flagstaff, Nasa transformed an old volcano into an astronaut training ground to trial the original lunar rover.
Thousands of tons of explosives were used to re-create the craters of the Sea of Tranquillity, the site where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would make their historic landing two years later. Nasa used satellite photographs of the moon itself to get the terrain at Cinder Lake just right already.
The site marked Crater Field 2 has been destroyed by quad bikers. However, hiking a little further into the desert I found Crater
Field 1. Further away from Highway 89, it has survived the test of time and could easily double for the moon’s surface.
FLY ME TO THE MOON
The footprints of astronauts who trained here have long disappeared. Under my feet, the porous volcanic gravel crunched like outsize grains of sand. However, unlike sand, when I stepped down into one of the craters the shape of the hole remained intact.
Only a handful of the 12 men who walked on the surface of the moon are still alive today — Armstrong himself died in 2012. Perhaps one day the boot marks on the surface of the moon will be the ultimate goal for space tourists?
Durrance believes we are only a few decades away from passenger flights to the moon. “Absolutely. We had the technology 50 years ago. The commercial rockets we are about to see in the sky are far more advanced. They are the beginning of a great adventure.
“Obviously, there is nothing like space on Earth. I’m too old to go back but what I experienced up there will live with me forever.”
“You can feel your heart pumping — the thrust from the engines vibrates through the landscape. There’s a flash of fire, the ground seems to move and then the flame soars into the sky.”