NASA Space Centre, Houston

"We choose to go to the moon. Not because it is easy. But because it is hard" - President John F. Kennedy, September 1962

I had a morning free before my Saturday afternoon flight home, so I took a cab to the NASA Space Centre. Great exhibition with films and real artefacts. Moon rock and gloves and spacesuits shown above. It reminded me of something a little closer to home. The Royal Air Force museum in Colindale, London (where I live). Great huge exhibits celebrating human endeavour, and engineering excellence.

One part of the hall shows all the advances derived from space research, and these include scheduling software, condition monitoring, silicon in shock absorption, lots of waste management techniques, and many others.

Quite inspiring. I also kept remembering scenes from the great film "The Right Stuff", about the space race, and the first test pilots, Chuck Yeager and John Glen.

The starting film show gave me goose bumps, as Kennedy said those words and the astronauts played golf on the moon. Spent loads in the souvenir shop.

T-shirt slogans: "It's not rocket science. Er, yes it is", and "NASA: Failure is not an option".