Space Center Houston / NASA

25 mi. south-east of Houston, on the west side of Clear Lake, is the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, with the world-famous Mission Control, the monitoring centre for all NASA manned space flights. In the Visitor Orientation Center is a space exhibition, with film shows, models of space capsules, astronauts' rations, samples of moon rock and a variety of objects from the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo manned space programmes. Visitors can try on astronauts' helmets, steer a spacecraft in the simulator and, in the extensive grounds of the Space Center, wonder at huge space rockets and perhaps meet a real astronaut on his way to the Mission Simulation and Training Facility, where in the course of training he may be hurled around in a centrifuge measuring 100 ft across.