![]() I spent the weekend moping and finally, last night, my wife says, 'You're going to Houston,' and called Southwest and got me a ticket."Īlthough some 10,000 people attended the service within the NASA compound, many more were trying to find the appropriate place to mourn on the fringes. In fact, he's staying with the Hectors: "I live in Dallas. In fact, he's such a good customer that he's helping count extra inventory, cutting into surplus boxes of shuttle souvenirs the Hectors hadn't planned on selling until summertime. He doesn't work in aerospace, but he's one of those many self-described space nuts, able to recite the most marginal trivia of the space program. "This is sort of the official headquarters for the outside world," says Richard Rogers, a longtime customer of Space Center Souvenirs. Those who live and work in and around Johnson Space Center weren't just looking for comfort and poignancy in today's memorial service for the seven astronauts killed in Saturday's explosion of the space shuttle Columbia they know that to curtail the shuttle program in any way will affect them all, from executive engineers down to the people who deliver memorial bouquets from a floral shop called NASA Flowers. Houston is always tearing itself up and rebuilding in the name of progress. ![]() Like much of Houston, NASA Road 1 is unsuitable as a visual backdrop for grief or reflection, and doesn't offer much in the way of glamour, which, the locals say, is a point of pride.īusiness is simply business in this town, founded on an ethic of commerce over all else. The future, it turned out, came to resemble Casual Friday living among NASA is a quiet life in nerdsville. Engineers stopped wearing horn rims and short sleeves. Most astronauts long stopped looking like regulation crew-cut flyboys of yore, a worthy price of NASA's latter-day diversity. They don't come right out and tell you."Īlong this road, the space age melds with the everyday. "The thing is," he said, "you never really know if they're astronauts or not. " come in here to buy patches to give to people later, so they can say the patch went to space. "There was something on the news about them finding a Columbia patch in the woods, and people get all excited that it was being worn by an astronaut, but that's not the case," Hector said. Kalpana Chawla had been in here recently to buy a set of patches, Randy Hector said. He made sure each of them signed his guest book. Her husband tended to customers, regaling them with astronaut stories to temper the sense of loss. Someone offered to calm her with a large Dr Pepper. She was busy fretting over a missing shipment of Columbia patches. The TV was on and the VCR was queued up to tape the hymns, eulogies and pageantry that Cindy figured they'd watch some other day, when they have more time to process it. They'd already seen Air Force One sail overhead for a landing. Late this morning, proprietors Cindy and Randy Hector were bracing for a high tide of customers to come down the road and into the souvenir shop. You can get a T-shirt decorated with cats wearing space suits, or an infant-sized onesie with the NASA logo that says "I Need My Space." ![]() This is where you get toy space shuttles, photographs, NASA sportswear and the much-sought-after mission patches. There is also Space Center Souvenirs, a cramped gift shop, which is to this astroland what a surf shop would be to a beach town. In a strip shopping center on NASA Road 1, there is a pawn shop, an Italian restaurant and a salon called HairTex. It's a road where the nation's space heroes get their Chinese takeout and drop off their dry cleaning. NASA Road 1 runs the perimeter around the government's barbed-wire-and-drab-office complex on the swampy plains of southeast Houston. Join us as we inspire a new generation of pioneers and explorers.As gorgeous as the view from space may be, the view from Johnson Space Center is more surly and bound, a solid row of motels, restaurants, apartment complexes and box stores. The Wright Brothers & The Invention of the Aerial AgeĪ major renovation is underway as we reimagine all 23 galleries and presentation spaces in our iconic National Mall building in Washington, DC. National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC Septem| 8 and the Desegregation of Commercial Air Transportation Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA Septem| 8Ĭongressman Charles C.
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