This week-end we went to visit Houston and did the obligatory visit to the Space Center. Oh, how disappointing it was. How do you know you’re screwed as a society?

• When 25% of the public display area inside the Space Center is a food court filled with junk food you wouldn’t feed to your dog
• When your gift shop and photo booth get the prime floor space
• When you present a selective history of the NASA history omitting most of the accidents and sacrifices that led to the accomplishment of manned space flight.
• When many visitors are foreign speaking visitors from Eastern European and Asian countries
• When your space shuttle landing simulator is “kaputt” – both, like in “two”
• When your robots arm display has no balls (the payload) to play with
• When you show mostly mock-ups instead of the real stuff the tax payer has been paying for

Considering manned space flight was one of the biggest accomplishments of man kind in the previous century, the Space Center is a sorry display of stuff that was prepared and thought to be fun for kids, but fails on almost all levels. How disappointing! Maybe it wasn’t so bad after all that Houston ended up only with the Space Shuttle mock up instead of one of the other three surviving real shuttles. Hey, Texas already has one scattered all over northern Texas anyway. Boy, am I upset about this Space Center! What a missed opportunity to excite future generations for space travel. NASA was and is financed by tax dollars. I would expect them to spend our money more wisely and on less of this – “Oh, science is Fun!” shit. Until then, more junk food to the nation. Knock yourself out. I won’t be back.