In a field a few miles outside of Houston, in the great US state of Texas, a herd of longhorn cattle loiter. These hardy cows, known for their tender beef, absently chew cud in the shadow of buildings where the smartest engineers in the world plot the exploration of Mars. The – also a tourist attraction, naturally – has masterminded NASA’s manned spaceflight missions for more than 60 years.
The cows are raised in part by local children who use the proceeds of dairy sales to go towards Houston’s schools but, frankly, not calling the project The Milky Way seems a missed opportunity. Yet the combination of America’s ingenuity and endeavour with its cattle ranch culture – moon gazers inside, and mooing grazers outside – says more about Houston than any knackered cliches about Texas could. Houston: Space Town Space Town, as it’s known thanks to the astronaut training centre and tourist attraction on its outskirts, is the most colourful, sprawling city in the southern United States and while it may not have been top of your across the pond, perhaps it should.
Getting there is easier than visiting the moon, obviously. After a car journey from Glasgow, we fly from Manchester to Houston on Singapore Airlines’ recently expanded route and, for my money, this carrier is the most comfortable out there at the moment. Treat yourself to the Premium Economy option and, along with the friendliest cabin stewards in the business (trust me, I’ve hauled long a few times), you’ll land feeling, well, stellar.
A huge city The state of Texas is about three times the size of Britain, and Houston was built without worrying about taking up much room. The city sprawls for dozens of miles in all directions, with a downtown crowded by towering energy company skyscrapers baking in the heat of the Gulf Coast. To get around we’re advised to use taxis.
They’re fairly cheap and you’ll get to chat to the panoply of hugely friendly drivers who will bombard you with that famous Southern Hospitality. We visit the Montrose area, a hip, diverse neighbourhood – in one of the most diverse cities in the USA – which is highly wanderable due to its street art, thrift stores, hip coffee shops and cracking restaurants. Of the latter, Hugo’s was created by an eponymous immigrant chef to bring authentic Mexican food to Texans and lucky tourists.
The lamb taco here is what I’d class as life-changing: you’ll never buy a sad Tex-Mex food kit from the supermarket ever again. After a glorious margarita (and a 0% cerveza for me) we retire to the Laura Hotel located Downtown, a boutique hotel which offers tremendous views of the city’s skyline and boasts its own pool if you want to spend a day cooling off in the Houston heat. The hotel is well air-conditioned which is absolutely required in a city which at one point during our visit reached 46C.
Even cooler than the hotel air conditioning is The Buffalo Bayou Cistern. An abandoned underground water reservoir too expensive to demolish has been cleverly repurposed into a hypnotic art installation which bombards your senses with a laser light show and plaintive music among the subterranean columns. A night at the Astros To contrast, there is the very much above-ground experience of Minute Maid Park.
Texans love sport and the biggest team here is undoubtedly the Astros, a baseball team named in tribute to NASA’s exploits up the highway. Even if you don’t understand the sport, the Astros know how to put on a show: it’s ladies night and following the crack of a bat hitting a home run, the delirious crowd dance to local star Beyonce’s Single Ladies blaring over the PA. Donning our Astros baseball caps, we head to Johnson Space Center.
If you’re looking to experience the golden era of NASA up close then this is, as they say, the right stuff. There are cutting-edge rockets like the SpaceX Falcon 9 but that vessel, with its showy name and smooth curves, pales beside the blocky, functional artefacts from spaceflight’s 1960s heyday. Our tour guide, the wonderful Robert, drives us around the grounds, explaining how astronauts prefer shrimp cocktail in space because it’s spicy.
He promises to suggest lamb tacos to NASA’s culinary boffins. The gargantuan Saturn V rocket lies in a hangar yards away from those longhorn cattle. It took engineers only a few years to invent and build this epoch-changing machine which took humans to the moon in less than a few days.
It takes even less than that to go to Houston. It’s not rocket science, folks. Space Center Houston serves as the official visitor centre for the Lyndon B Johnson Space Center.
Artefacts on show include a lunar touchstone one of only eight Moon rocks in the world that can be touched. Apollo 17’s command module America, which orbited the Moon a record 75 times, can also be found there. Factfile Flights to Houston available from Singapore Airlines at singaporeair.
com. Rooms at the Laura Hotel from £235 per night, available at.
