Houston, We Have a Problem...: the Price of Hype at Space Center Houston
Written: Apr 17 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Space. The final frontier...
Cons: High prices, too many gimmicks, forgets to focus on science and technology
The Bottom Line: An okay place for a fun day, if you don't mind HIGH prices, but seriously lacks "the right stuff" -- science, rockets, space, technology.
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| mrkstvns's Full Review: Johnson Space Center |
Space Center Houston is the official visitor center of NASA's Johnson Space Center. It is located in southeast Houston in the Clear Lake area. This is a wiggly part of town. While you could be forgiven for thinking the place looked like a typical, upper-middle class, suburban kind of neighborhood, be careful! Wiggly things happen in Clear Lake.
NASA is just slightly more famous than some of the other notable tourist attractions in the Clear Lake area: like the house where Andrea Yates, mild mannered suburban mom, went berserk, drowning 5 children in her bathtub. And who can forget the amazing parking lot of the Hilton Clear Lake -- the site where mild mannered dentist Clara Harris went berserk, running over her husband 3 times with a silver 2001 Mercedes-Benz S430, simultaneously demonstrating to the world both the fury of a woman scorned and the fine taste in automobiles that such a woman can possess.
Yes, Clear Lake is a wiggly place. That's why, being a good Texan, I always lock and load before heading over there. A guy can never be too careful out on the scary frontiers of suburbia.
But the scariness of Clear Lake is nothing compared to the real fright of a trip to Space Center Houston: the horror of seeing the prices posted at the ticket booths!!
You Want HOW MUCH MONEY!??
For some reason, the folks who operate the visitor center think that they're running a Six Flags theme park. (They even sell season passes!)
Basic admission runs $16.95. That's after you've already paid $4 to park, but before you'll be asked to pony up $2 to $4 for each little simulator ride or activity that the kids want to do once they get inside. That's before you'll be asked to pay $29.95 for men's polo shirts (available in Deep Space Black, Martian Red, or Moon Rock Grey -- sorry, no XXXL size) in the gift shop.
But the outrageous prices are just the beginning of my complaints (you were afraid of that, weren't you?)
Where's THE BEEF??
I might not mind getting reamed up the wazoo on prices if there was some real value to the place, but there's not. Well, not much anyway.
I'm a huge fan of space exploration and a huge supporter of NASA. In my opinion, NASA is one of those rare government programs that actually gives back to the nation far more than the investment we make in it. Space can still be humanity's future, but only if kids grow up imagining what could be...
In my opinion, you don't spark imagination by charging rip off prices to get into a "Space Center Plaza" full of irrelevant junk.
Sure, there are a few things that are kind of cool. The IMAX is excellent, and it's included in the admission price (at least they give us something for all that money). Mostly though, the Space Center Plaza is dull, uninteresting, filled with basic play stuff and cartoon characters that have nothing whatsoever to do with space, and the major chunk of real estate seems to be devoted to two giant souvenir shops within the span of 10 yards of each other and an overpriced food court, evidently engineered to use the vacuum of space to suck all the dollars out of your wallet. (And yes, I did use the word "suck". No, it is not coincidence.)
So what will you find here?
Well, let's see. There's a really tall indoor playland which looks remarkably like the one they have over at the McDonald's on NASA Road 1, just a little bigger. At least McDonalds doesn't charge you $17 to climb through a plastic tube...they just charge for the plastic food.
You'll also find a hall full of computer games that are marginally about space exploration. You can sit at a PC running Microsoft Flight Simulator with a Space Shuttle module. Whoop-dee-do. Why would you go to Space Center Houston for that? You could buy better flight simulator software at your friendly local CompUSA and play it EVERY day. There's another game about planning a mission to Mars. The only point it really makes is that there are weight, space, and cost tradeoffs in everything related to space travel. Not a tough concept (I think I conveyed the thought adequately in a single sentence). Unfortunately, the game lacks pizzazz, action, and any kind of reward for playing -- you probably already have better, more realistic, and more educational space travel games on your Nintendo.
There's a wall of pictures of astronauts and a space suit -- that's pretty cool. The robot arm is kind of interesting. I'm not sure what the point is of having a Mazda parked in the middle of the floor (I swear I am not making this up). Perhaps somebody figured out how to dodge those silly parking fees. There is a full-size mock-up of a shuttle cockpit that you can check out (that's cool too -- in fact, it's the coolest thing in the center's main hall).
What's really missing is EVERYTHING that's real science, real engineering, real imagination. I honestly don't think I learned a single new fact or concept by visiting this place. So, I could buy a Pepsi and corn dog for $10 and an overpriced T-shirt for $15, then pay $4 to sit in a simulator. I could have more fun at a Dave and Busters arcade for less money (plus Dave sells beer, which is always better than Pepsi).
Whoever put this place together should go visit the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Now THAT is a place that can spark some imagination, that can educate a kid, that can make someone dream the impossible -- and it's a place that can do it with substance, and reality, and FOR FREE!
At Space Center Houston, I can't help but walk away feeling like I paid a prime rib price and was given a basket of hay.
Optional Reality...
There is one very, very cool part of a trip to the Space Center: the tram tour.
The tram goes inside the working center and let's you see a small slice of the kind of activities that go into making NASA's manned space program work. It lets the public see that manned spaceflight is not just seven astronauts strapping themselves into a huge bottle of explosives. It is thousands of engineers, computer scientists, physicists, mathematicians and other smart people behind the scenes designing and building thousands of things that make the flight possible.
The tour captures a little bit of the reality and history of manned space flight. It let's you see the old mission control room that was used throughout the Apollo era and even up until fairly recently. A lot of fascinating events in early space history unfolded before America's eyes from this room -- including the first lunar landing, the Apollo-Soyuz docking, and the first space shuttle missions. Today's working mission control room is another part of this same building, but this historic center is being renovated to look as it did during the Apollo era -- complete with 1960s era terminals, computers, and communications equipment.
The tour also takes you through a shuttle mock-up facility where astronauts train in several full-size, complete (except for wings) space shuttles. This room also contains a duplicate Canada Arm, the hoist mechanism that astronauts use on the shuttle to lift satellites out of the cargo bay, preparing them for release in orbit.
In past years, the tour also included a visit to the indoor pools where astronauts would train underwater with various types of equipment, in an environment that would emulate some of the physical aspects of working in space. This stop wasn't on the tour the last time I visited the Space Center.
As the tram returns to the main building, you have a chance to get out and walk around some of the rockets that have been used throughout NASA's 40 year history. The most impressive is the huge Saturn V rocket. This gigantic workhorse was the lift engine that put astronauts into space on all of the Apollo missions. It is far more powerful than anything the United States now has and is a far more capable workhorse than the shuttle ever was. It doesn't look as sexy, it's not "reusable", but it was always a cheaper and better launch vehicle. According to the guide, this is the only unused Saturn V rocket in existence, and it is not a replica, it was simply built prior to the cancellation of the Apollo program. Impressive!
IMAX to the Max...
Besides the tram tour, the only thing I really liked about Space Center Houston is the IMAX. It's like every other IMAX theatre around the country, but it features movies about space flight and NASA's role in today's high-tech world. The theatre is huge and I like that there is no extra fee to see the flick (some museums these days seem more intent on selling IMAX tickets than they do getting folks into their galleries).
It's nice to have a few minutes reprieve from the barrage of merchandising that bombards you in the rest of the Space Plaza.
A Dummie's Guide to Security...
I'm all for good security, but I lose patience with places that are idiots about it. Space Center Houston is firmly in the idiots camp.
They already screen everyone at the front door, which is fine, but then to do it again before boarding the tram? That's paranoid overkill, especially when they have incompetent amateurs doing the screening. (Sloooooooowwwww lines, and once you get to the metal detector, they'll fret about your belt buckel for hours while ignoring those gigantic diaper bags, camera bags, purses, ammo tins, and so forth, which get passed around the side without a second glance. Can you say "idiots"? Sure. I knew you could.
The Bottom Line...
I can see someone having a good time at Space Center Houston. There's some cool stuff there, a good IMAX show, and an excellent center tour, but in my opinion, FAR too little science and FAR too much commercialism. The center tour itself should be free and accessible to all, after all, this is a government facility paid for with public funds. The location is in the suburbs -- on public property -- parking should be free. The IMAX show might be worth $3. The rest is not worth paying for -- it's not as good as the science museums in any U.S. city, and it's got but the slimmest fraction of the depth and meat and significance of good flight museums.
I'm all for giving kids the opportunity to let their minds run wild with dreams of space exploration. I just wish places like JSC could do it without dumbing things down to the level of cro-magnons, that they could do it without crass commercialism, that they could do it without HUGE price tags, and by the way, it might be nice to stay open a little later than 5pm...but short hours are the least of their problems.
Hello, Houston? Anyone there? Can you hear me now???
Recommended:
No
Best Suited For: Families
Best Time to Travel Here: Mar - May
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