San Antonio to Houston is about 210 miles... lots of the interstates here now have a 75 MPH freeway speed limit, so it's about three hours. Austin is about an hour north of San Antonio on I-35. One can take Highway 90 from Austin to Houston, but honestly you're better to just go to Seguin and get on the interstate (I-10).
Johnson Space Center is 65 miles from my back door... off of I-45 south from downtown Houston to Galveston, maybe 30-40 minutes south of downtown Houston. Their visitor center is "Space Center Houston" and is across Saturn Lane from the actual JSC grounds... They have a website for more information. The visitor center is a little too much like a "chucky cheese" kiddie pizza joint for my liking, but they DO have some interesting stuff... you go through the "starship gallery" which is the museum part after going through a somewhat dated movie "on human destiny" which at least is narrarated by Gene Kranz... they have a full-scale Skylab trainer that's been modified for folks to walk through, the Apollo 17 Command Module, a Gemini capsule hanging from the ceiling (can't recall which one at the moment) and the Faith 7 Mercury capsule, along with a model of Explorer I and a model of Goddard's first liquid fuel rocket. In the back is an Apollo capsule trainer "docking" with the Skylab, a shuttle stack model (about maybe 1/10 scale or thereabouts) and a wind tunnel model of the shuttle orbiter, and various and sundry space items (gloves, food, etc). The lunar lab is kind of interesting as well, with rocks and soil...
There's an SSME sitting across from the "starship gallery" and a LM about twelve feet up in the air over the entrance to the gallery. There's also the front end of a shuttle orbiter (full scale model) you can go upstairs and go onto the flight deck, both the mid-deck (lower level) and the upper flight deck (upper level) accessible by stairs or elevator. They have some spacesuits on display in the lobby of the IMAX theatre below, and a "cutaway" ISS module that they periodically give presentations on. There's the "blast off experience" on the other side of the center where you watch a short movie of clips of the shuttle taking off while being bombarded by launching sounds from huge speakers. Then you go into a theatre behind it and a NASA employee gives a short presentation and Q&A about what's currently going on in space, mostly on ISS, and NASA's future plans. The end of the building is the departure point for the tram tours-- boarding every 30 minutes (and you want to get there EARLY and DO THEM FIRST because they fill up and sometimes you'll wait an hour or more in line!) There's usually two tram tours, and the vary from time to time. Mostly they go to historic mission control (the original MOCR from which the Gemini flights and Apollo flights to the moon were all controlled, and the shuttle flights for a big chunk of the program until the new shuttle control room came online (which is now retired since the US isn't launching any manned spacecraft anymore, unless/until SLS actually flies manned again in the next decade (if ever). The ISS control room is also periodically a tour stop, but I don't know that they've been going there recently (in the last few years anyway). I was in there on the tour but it was a pretty long while back. The historic mission control is the most interesting IMHO. The other tour usually goes to the former "shuttle training facility" (STF) now renamed the "spaceflight training facility" (STF-- see, we're saving money-- no need to change the acronym! LOL
) In it is a full scale amalgamation of every ISS module, the robotic arms from the station/shuttle, a full scale Soyuz trainer, and in the back, a full scale Orion capsule... (not sure if it's there anymore, but I THINK it is...) There used to be two forward section trainers for the shuttle cabin and nose section (one that tilted upright like at launch or tipped over horizontal like at landing, and the other was horizontal... and the 'full fuselage trainer', essentially a shuttle payload bay and cabin and tail section without the wings... used to train astronauts for dealing with payloads... AFAIK, those trainers are supposed to be sent elsewhere, Seattle I think... Don't know if they're still there or not (don't think they are but I could be mistaken). The far end is dedicated to storage and training areas for various manned pressurized rovers and other surface exploration systems they're tinkering with but don't have official development programs (or funding) to build yet... (if ever). The tram tour then continues around the backside of the complex past the fairly new astronaut dorm (where shuttle astronauts would live the last two weeks before a mission to be isolated from diseases, now probably sitting vacant) and the astronaut gym, circling back around to the front where the astronaut memorial tree grove is, and back to the rocket park, where you can get off and go see the Mercury Redstone, the Apollo Little Joe II, an F-1 engine, J-2 engine, and H-1 engine from Saturn IB, and inside the building is the restored Saturn V that would have been Apollo 20 or Skylab II if they'd have flown (in which case it'd be on the bottom of the Atlantic in a million pieces). It's a sight to see... If you want to spend more time there, you can take a later tram back, or you CAN go over in your own car, pull up to the guard shack at the JSC entrance, and tell them you're going to rocket park, and they'll let you pass... you turn left immediately behind the guard shack into the parking lot of rocket park, and go up the sidewalk into the building...
Space Center Houston isn't as nice or well done as Kennedy Space Center or the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, but it's pretty decent and its close. SCH also just got KSC's full-scale shuttle model, which you can walk through, unlike the REAL shuttle that KSC got, which will be affixed at an angle like it's "flying in space" on permanent display (and which nobody will be allowed to touch or enter). The shuttle model is right outside the entrance to SCH, accessed by a ramp or something (it was under construction the last time I was down there). When you're done, head south to Galveston and get you a good seafood dinner at Miller's Landing, on the seawall... there's a million places down there, but Miller's Landing is darn hard to beat IMHO.
White Sands is cool, but there's not a whole terrible lot to see there... my wife and I went on vacation in March about 8 years ago... We really enjoyed it. We went to Carlsbad Caverns (WELL worth the effort-- absolutely gorgeous down there!) and then to Alamogordo and spent the night... driving off the edge of the escarpment from Cloudcroft down into the Tularosa Basin is something to see... The Space Hall of Fame is there in Alamogordo, and they have a VERY nice museum there, including a lot of V-2 rocket parts that they've collected from out in the desert on the White Sands Missile Range. White Sands National Monument is interesting-- walking in those white sand dunes is something else... If you drive an hour or so west from Alamogordo, you get to the visitor center for White Sands Missile Range-- they have a VERY nice rocket park and museum. If you go north a couple hours drive or so to Albuquerque, you can see the National Atomic Museum (can't recall but they might have changed the name) where they have lots of nuclear weapons and missiles and stuff on display and tell basically the story of the atomic bomb from the beginning to the near-present. LOTS of interesting stuff to see there. If you go to Pima Arizona, they have the Titan Missile Museum down there where you can actually go down into a Titan missile silo, with the missile still in it (where they filmed "Star Trek First Contact") Haven't gotten to do that but I want to...
You're right about Texas being BIG... when you cross the border on I-10 from Louisiana into Texas, there's a roadsign-- Beaumont is like 20 miles, Houston is about 100, and El Paso is 860 miles... LOL
Just to let ya know you'll be stayin' awhile... LOL
It's funny because it's only 900 miles from my house 40 miles west of Houston to Nashville, Tennessee... 14 hours straight by car...
Not completely sure of the mileage, but from San Antonio, I'm betting it's a good 500 miles PLUS to White Sands/Alamogordo... Houston is pretty doable... about a 3 hour drive from San Antonio, but even at 75 MPH, El Paso is pretty much a day's drive, and I bet to Alamogordo you can safely figure a day's drive.
The good news?? Gas is only about $3 a gallon or so over here, so that's a LOT cheaper than you guys are used to in the UK, and the exchange rates are pretty favorable to you guys too IIRC...
Later and if there's anything else you want to know, lemme know...
OL JR
PS... used to have a girlfriend from New Jersey... NJ has SIX counties... Texas has 254... some of which are larger than the entire STATE of New Jersey! LOL
