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Hey folks, we are sat at a PC starting this blog all over again - we just had a power cut due to thunder and lightening, my (Mark) patience is wearing thin!!
So, since our last post we have been to the Johnson Space Center which was a pretty amazing place. We took a tram tour around the base and stopped off at the Mission Control Center (MCC). This is where they controlled all of the Apollo missions from and where they currently control the International Space Station (ISS). We viewed all of this from the gallery where the astronauts family sit during missions - can't get better than that! On the big screen we were able to see the tracks of the ISS's orbit around the Earth - we were told that they experience 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets in a 24 hour period - major jet lag!! As a result their day is controlled by the MCC - it is broken down into 5 minute intervals and they are told when to eat, sleep, work, exercise and so on..... They are currently working on tissue engineering as they have discovered that they can grow tissue in 3D e.g. the lack of gravity means that cells are not confined to the base of the growth media - hope that interests all you hospital buffs!!
The guy who took the talk at the MCC said they (NASA) are hoping to have a permanant resident on the moon by 2020, they are also working on a manned mission to Mars by 2030 - exciting stuff. Another interesting fact - for every dollar spent NASA make 8.75 in return!! No suprise that Obama has increased their budget by 2.5 bn dollars. There are so many other cool things to talk about, we won't bore you with the details.
After a brief stop at Fort Worth we arrived in Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Here we visited the vast array of underground caverns located under the desert, 780 feet below the surface. We walked down into the depths of the cavern for over an hour before reaching the "Big Room". Unfortunately due to the lack of lighting it was difficult to get many clear photos, which is a shame as it was suprisingly beautiful for a bunch of rocks!! luckily no one is allowed to walk out, you have to take a lift to the top which travels at 35mph and takes 58 sec to reach the top - you do the maths!
We then drove 8 hours through New Mexico to where we are now - Cortez CO. On the way we passed through Roswell - not quite as I'd like to have imagined, no green men running around anywhere, ha! Today we visited the Mesa Verde National Park, we visited the ruins of the Peubloan cliff dwellers, a race that exsisted here from 500 BC until 700 years ago (approx dates). Their houses were built into the cliff face usually under a large overhang of sandstone rock. To access the ruins we had to walk down paths along the cliff face and to exit we had to climb near vertical ladders and crawl through some narrow passage ways - all a bit of fun! The Cliff Palace, the largest of the ruins originally had 125 rooms!! Every ruin had one or more Kiva's, these are circular holes in the ground, built of stone approximately 15 feet in diameter, roofed with logs and clay. In the center of the Kiva's floor was a spirit hole which is where the natives believed they arrived from. They believed that this was the fourth layer of the world, all previous layers were worse than this one and over time they would progress to the fifth layer and so on.
From here we are heading west to Monument Valley - the land which made John Wayne famous. Against our better judgement we are hoping to take a horse back tour into the valley as a birthday treat or terror!!!! The last three horsey experiences were not good - hoping for fourth time lucky. There is always a jeep tour to fall back on.
Again, we hope that anyone reading this is well and we would love to hear from you if you would like to post us a message.
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