johnboystravelblog

Or as it’s often known:

The second full day of my week in south-central Texas I headed north to Austin, only about 20 miles from where I was staying in Buda.  First stop – the Stevie Ray Vaughan statue downtown:

SRV, arguably the most talented blues guitarist of all time, died in a tragic helicopter crash in Wisconsin at the age of 35.  This statue is located on the south shore of Town Lake, across from downtown Austin.

Next stop – the Capitol building (since Austin is the capital of Texas):

And for those of you who shop at Whole Foods, Austin is their headquarters and this is their main store:

And yes, that’s my brown Nissan Altima with “rock-star parking” right in front!

My first full day in south-central Texas I headed for San Antonio, about 60 miles to the south of where I was staying in Buda.

Of course the first thing everyone should see in San Antonio is The Alamo, actually the Alamo Mission as that’s really what it was – a Spanish mission founded by Roman Catholic missionaries.  Hard to tell from my photos but The Alamo is right in the heart of what is now downtown San Antonio, the city having been constructed around it.

A really neat feature of San Antonio is Riverwalk, a river which runs for several blocks (5 miles, actually) downtown (and 10 miles outside the immediate downtown area) and affords many of the restaurants downtown an opportunity to offer outdoor dining at a level lower than surface streets.  Very nice!

There were boats (basically taxis) which ferry paying customers up and down Riverwalk:

This guy found a very friendly squirrel (or, the squirrel found a very friendly man):

And this is some other fancy artwork in the playground portion of a city park downtown:

I’m not much of a beer drinker but I do enjoy an occasional “cold one”.  I don’t drink enough to be able to discern one brand from another and pretty much limit my opinion to “I like it” or “I don’t”.

Prior to my “Texas Loop” trip I had, on a few occasions, enjoyed a cold Shiner Bock and it is solidly on my “like” list.  I was therefore delighted to learn that, with a small route variation, I’d be able to visit and tour the K. Spoetzl Brewery in Shiner, Texas where Shiner Bock is made.

May 16, 2016

After spending 3 days and nights in Houston I set out to travel 2 hours and 45 minutes west to where I would ultimately stay in the little town of Buda.  My plan for the next 7 days was to visit Austin and San Antonio, which are about 80 miles apart in south-central Texas. I originally booked an Airbnb for the full week in San Marco which is almost exactly halfway between Austin and San Antonio so that I’d have the flexibility to go to either one based on weather or specific things I wanted to see. Unfortunately that reservation was cancelled prior to my arrival and I was forced to make other arrangements and stay in Buda instead (which is closer to Austin).  The original Airbnb host was very apologetic that he had to cancel the reservation for a reason beyond his control, which I fully understood.  I ended up staying with a very nice family in Buda so it all worked out just fine.

The brewery, named for founder Kosmos Spoetzl, a Bavarian immigrant, is the largest independent brewery in the state of Texas.

In addition to the free plant tour I enjoyed 3 of the 4 complimentary glasses (small, 4 oz. glasses) of various Shiner brands I was offered (I was obviously driving so I chose to pass on the 4th glass), and of course visited the gift shop where I purchased some Shiner swag.

I drove through the town of Shiner, a very nice little town, before heading northwest to Lockhart for lunch and on to Buda to get settled in for the week.

In Lockhart I had an amazing lunch at a highly recommended barbecue restaurant.  Most of those venues in Texas offer you a choice of brisket, ribs or spicy sausage and in all cases I chose one of each.  Believe me, Texans know how to make all three!

May 15, 2017

The main reason I stopped in Houston during my early 2017 “Texas Loop” was to visit NASA’s Johnson Space Center.  When manned missions were launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Mission Control there managed the events until the spacecraft cleared the launch tower.  The remainder of the flight was managed by Mission Control here at JSC.

The two jets in the photo above are like the ones which helped astronauts train for flying the Space Shuttle.  They were also “chase planes” which flew parallel to the Shuttle on many flights once they got down towards the Earth’s surface and especially when they landed after a mission to shoot video and take still photos to help NASA engineers monitor flight characteristics.

 

Although we couldn’t go in it, the building above houses Mission Control at JSC and has been named for Christopher Columbus Kraft, Jr. who helped establish the overall Mission Control concept, was Flight Director for many of the manned missions, was eventually named Head of Mission Operations and ultimately became the Director of JSC.  He was still living when I made this post earlier this year but passed away July 22, 2019 at age 95.

Frankly I wasn’t nearly as impressed with the Visitor Center at JSC as I have been with other NASA facilities I have been to.  Perhaps the most interesting thing, other than the Saturn V rocket (see next post), was what greets visitors after they have parked their cars and are walking towards the Visitor Center:

This is the actual Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA), tail designation N905NA, which is one of two specially modified 747 jets which could carry the Shuttle “piggyback” on top of the plane (the second 747 has tail designation N911NA).  This was necessary for early test flights where the jet would carry the Shuttle up to high altitude where the two vehicles would separate and the Shuttle would glide back to Earth.  When the Shuttle actually flew in space there were many times when it would land at Edwards Air Force base in California (early flights in particular – a much larger runway located in a remote area, for added safety, and when proven stable if bad weather prohibited landing at Kennedy Space Center where it was attached to the booster rockets and launched).  On all those occasions one of the 747’s would return the Shuttle to Florida.  At the end of the Shuttle program the 747’s flew their final missions, taking the Shuttles to airports near the various museums around the country where they are now on display.

After it’s last Shuttle ferrying flight the second 747, N911NA, was flown from Edwards Air Force base to an Air Force facility in Palmdale, California and is being cannibalized to keep another NASA aircraft in service.

The airplane above is real but the Shuttle on top is a model.  Visitors could go inside both.

I hadn’t noticed it at the time but in researching the aircraft for this post I found this photo of a silhouette near the front of the plane showing how many times it carried various Shuttles:

(Photo credit: None – Public Domain!)

I also found this photo of the Orbiter Mount which is where the Shuttle is attached to the airplane.  You can’t see it in the photos I posted but please note the humorous comment someone painted on it:

(Photo credit: Rob Elliott)

———————–

Where are the Space Shuttles now?

Atlantis is at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida

Discovery is at the Udvar-Hazy Center (part of the Smithsonian Institution) adjacent to Dulles airport outside Washington DC

Endeavour is at the California Science Center in Los Angeles

Enterprise (which never went into space but was released for 5 “glider flights” from the 747 shown above) is now on the deck of the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum (a former US Navy aircraft carrier) in New York City.  It had previously been on display at the Udvar-Hazy Center outside Washington DC.

———————-

Challenger was destroyed over the Atlantic Ocean shortly after launch

Columbia was destroyed (over Texas and Louisiana) during re-entry at the end of it’s mission on it’s way to Kennedy Space Center in Florida

 

The main reason I stopped in Houston during my early 2017 “Texas Loop” was to visit NASA’s Johnson Space Center.  When manned missions were launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Mission Control there managed the events until the spacecraft achieved orbit around the Earth.  The remainder of the flight was managed by Mission Control here at JSC.

One of the more impressive items on display was a full-size Saturn V rocket.  The Saturn V (5), designed by Wernher von Braun and Arthur Rudolph, launched all of the Apollo moon missions as well as Skylab, the first American space station.

Above is a photo of the first stage.  Below are the 5 F-1 engines capable of producing over 1.5 million pounds of thrust (each!) for a total of 7.5 million pounds.  To this day they are still the most powerful liquid-propellent rocket engines ever built.

I will be telling a story about these engines when I post photos from my visit to the NASA facility in Alabama where these were tested.

Here is the second stage, with 5 smaller engines:

And finally, the third stage with just one engine. This engine was initially fired to get the vehicle to full orbit around the Earth.  By the time this stage kicked in the vehicle had gained considerable altitude, was traveling at very considerable speed and required much less energy to achieve orbit. This engine was later fired a second time to remove the vehicle from Earth orbit and send it on it’s way to the moon.

On top of the third stage was a cone-shaped section which contained the lunar lander.

Finally, a can-shaped service module (gray in this photo) which contained fuel and other equipment to get the spacecraft back to Earth and the command module (brown in this photo) which the astronauts rode in.  At initial launch there was an emergency thruster (escape module, white in this photo) attached to the top of the command module in case it needed to be jettisoned for safety in the event of a launch failure.  The command module itself only had tiny “thrusters” to maneuver it in space and they wouldn’t have had nearly enough energy to get the command module away from the rocket at launch.

Here is look back down from the “top”

There are only three full-size Saturn V displays in the world.  This is the only one made completely of flight-certified hardware.  The other two displays contain a mix of flight hardware, mockups and test components.

While driving in the Houston area I saw these huge metal art works along side the highway.

To give you some idea how big these are, the fishing pole in the photo above snagged a full size pickup truck…

The wheels look kind of goofy but this stealth fighter was still pretty impressive:

I didn’t see any signs indicating who created these works of art.

The beautiful, largely symmetrical Mediterranean Revival and Byzantine styles of architecture on this campus were brought to my attention by a photo in the “36 Hours” series of articles and books published by the New York Times.  While in Houston I decided to visit the campus and see it for myself.

When I arrived in Houston, Texas in the late afternoon of May 13, 2017 the first place I stopped was at this quirky tourist attraction.  A man named John Milkovisch lived in this house with his wife Mary.  Mr. Milkovisch, shown below, claimed to have consumed over 39,000 cans of beer during his lifetime (he died in 1988).  After his death his wife remained in the house until a few years before her death in 2002.

While the house isn’t actually built with beer cans an estimated 50,000 cans, bottles, caps, pull-tabs, labels, coasters, 12-pack boxes, etc. adorn the walls and are formed into facades and pieces of art which hang throughout the property.

The inside of the house was pretty normal (Mary wouldn’t let him display beer cans in the house) although he did convert the lawn to concrete – he was tired of mowing – and his wife created some other forms of metal art for the property.

They had photos of other quirky tourist attractions located in other parts of the country in one room, two of which will be venues I have visited and will appear in future posts.

When I left Branson, Missouri in May of 2017 I headed south towards Texas.  I actually drove southeast on some beautiful scenic roads through central Arkansas and crossed into Louisiana where I would spend the night in Shreveport.  The next morning I drove further south on the west side of Louisiana and crossed over into Texas on Route 21 to the little town of Milam.  One of the interesting things I saw there was a road sign indicating that the distance to the next fairly big town was 19 miles and the distance to El Paso (on the other side of the state) was 860 miles!  They say everything is bigger in Texas and this made it clear that the lower portion of Texas is, indeed, very big.

From Milam I traveled west through Nacogdoches, then southwest to the town of Bryan.  A friend suggested I start including maps to illustrate the areas I refer to and I did look online last night to see if I could find a good map of eastern Texas but couldn’t find anything that wasn’t really cluttered.  At Bryan I turned left and started driving southeast towards my ultimate destination of Houston where I would be spending the next three nights.

Shortly after turning left on Route 6 in Bryan I came to College Station and shortly after that I saw a sign for Texas World Speedway, a now dormant racetrack.

I drove toward the facility thinking I’d be lucky if I could get to the fenceline and maybe get a picture of the back of the grandstands.  Much to my surprise the gate was open and there was someone at a small shed at the entrance who told me that the track was open and was hosting a group of motorcycle enthusiasts.  He had me sign a liability waiver, put a wristband on me and told me I could pretty much go anywhere I wanted except on pit road and on the track itself.

As I said, there were motorcycles on the track (look closely at the photo below)

It wasn’t a race but just practice for an upcoming event.  I spoke to one of the guys who was participating:

He had two bikes, the one he had just finished riding and another still on the trailer.

I was able to walk through the paddock area and up into the infield grandstands (well, an elevated viewing platform).  I didn’t own a digital camera at this point so the only photos I have were taken with my smartphone.

The cycles were riding on part of the main track as well as part of the road racing course which goes to areas both inside and outside the main oval:

(Photo credit: racingcircuits.info)

TWS consisted mainly of a 2-mile oval, one of only 7 tracks in the US 2 miles or more in length.  TWS had it’s heyday from when it was built in 1969 until the final NASCAR and IndyCar races were run there in 1981. After that it continued to host SCCA (sports cars), motorcycle and other races, driving schools and car clubs (Porsche, etc), and could be rented by major race teams for testing.

NASCAR’s Greg Biffle ran the fastest stock car lap at TWS in 2009.  His fastest speedtrap speed was 218 mph and his overall average on that lap was 195 mph.  Jeff Andretti holds the then-record (though unofficial) open wheel car closed course speed of 234.5 mph in 1993 while testing for that year’s Indianapolis 500.  Both of those sessions occurred on the oval portion of the track.

I was at TWS in May 2017 but later that year Hurricane Harvey devastated southern Texas in general and Houston in particular with torrential rain which resulted in major flooding.  As part of the cleanup from that hurricane flooded vehicles were transported to TWS for storage.

(Photo credit: theeagle.com)

(Photo credit: youtube.com)

When I was there in 2017 I read that the track facilities were to be demolished and the grounds used for a major housing development but now that all those vehicles are on the property I don’t know what the future holds for this large tract of land.

 

I just saw the coolest thing….

I read online today that SpaceX launched their first group of 60 Starlink satellites 4 days ago.  Although they will spread out over time they initially crossed the sky in a line, very close together.  This was how they looked the day after being launched:

(Photo credit: SatTrackCam Leiden)

The satellites were launched 4 days ago (May 23) and passed over Durham last night (May 26) at 1030pm.  I didn’t know about it until today but they crossed overhead again at about 925pm local time tonight (May 27).  The sky had been clear but cloud cover was starting to move in.  I went outside with my binoculars and finally spotted at least three which were clearly moving in a line together almost directly overhead.  They each “flashed” at least once which tells me they must be positioned in a manner which causes them to reflect the sun’s rays more intensely depending on their angle.

I will have to find out the next time they plan a launch and keep my fingers crossed that I might be in the right place to see them while they are grouped more tightly.  If I can find a link to determine when you can see them at your location I will add it to this post.  I know I found one once before but don’t know if it will be up to date for such a current launch, or if it is designed to track a group (the article I read called it a “flock”) of satellites since they will spread out after a few days.

It was fun to see at least a small group of satellites traveling together.  I believe they go over Durham again early in the morning either Wednesday or Thursday so I may try to get a brief glimpse again, although by then they may be so far apart it won’t be obvious that they are traveling together.

Looks like the website is n2yo.com and the Starlink Group is Object Catalog #74001.

Tuesday morning update – There was a short viewing opportunity at 531am.  The satellites were to pass from the NW horizon, low in the sky, to the SSE horizon.  The sky in the east was getting light (sunrise approaching) but the western horizon was still fairly dark and I could see a planet and maybe 3 bright stars.  The only thing I saw with the naked eye was one bright flash like I had seen Monday night.  Internet pictures show that these satellites have a long solar panel emanating from the main body.  The flash was very bright, not like an aircraft beacon but more like someone reflecting a bright light source with a mirror, which is essentially what is happening with a solar panel and the sun.  I’ve seen the ISS pass overhead many times but it creates a large, steady light source since it is so big and a flash from it probably wouldn’t be as noticeable.

I will have better viewing opportunities Wednesday at 450am and Thursday at 408am, both of which will cross higher in the sky and appear for a longer period of time.  Fingers crossed that I wake up in time and that skies remain clear!

Wednesday morning update – Good news and bad news.  The good news is the conditions were perfect.  I got out early to let my eyes adjust to the area I’d be watching (the northwest horizon, bordered by the setting Big Dipper constellation to my right and a bright planet to my left) and I have a perfect spot behind my apartment where the two street lights on either side of me were blocked by trees and the direction I was looking is a big open field.  The bad news – I saw exactly one.  I was more patient this time and watched the area for about 20 minutes.  Evidently if I had done that Monday night I might have seen more than three because some people are posting that they’ve seen a small group followed by a larger group.  It is now 6 days after launch and they are presumably getting spread further apart (and are raising their orbit further away from Earth).  The three I saw on Monday covered an area about as long as my hand held at arms length.  I didn’t see this object “flash” (astronomers apparently call it a “flare”) but I am confident I was seeing the right thing.  I did continue to scan the sky in case what I saw was a different satellite.

I have at least one more opportunity, tomorrow morning at 408am.  The sky will stay darker longer and I’m going to be looking at the same area.  I believe they will be passing a little higher in the sky so that may help me spot others.

Thursday morning update – About the same result as Wednesday… I spotted one shortly after the appointed time, slightly right from where I had seen in the night before, rising between the outermost and middle of the three stars which comprise the handle of the Big Dipper constellation (which was setting slowly on the horizon).  When I first saw it it was about as bright as those two stars and was on a trajectory which would take it almost directly overhead.  This time I noticed that it got dimmer as it approached the highest point in the sky and then almost completely faded from view (the sun would be rising over my right shoulder so as it started passing between me and the sun the reflection of the sun’s rays wouldn’t be nearly as bright). Again this time there was no flash or flare.  I continued scanning the sky between and above those two stars but never saw any more movement, nor did I see any flashes.  I waited almost a full hour, then gave up.

I am going to see if I can sign up for an alert when the next batch of satellites will be launched in the hope of seeing them the first few nights when they are grouped closest together.  Elon Musk (SpaceX) plans to launch over 12,000 of these satellites over the next ten years, apparently for high-speed internet communications.  The ability to see future satellites in orbit may be reduced as he is already getting flak from astronomers for polluting the sky with so many objects and may alter the material on their exterior to reduce their reflectivity.