This is hallowed ground.

When I walked into this room, a chill went through my body and I almost came to tears. This is the room that I (and countless millions of others) watched on TV, ever since I was a child, as men and women went into space. This is the room in which men in white shirts and skinny black ties bent over consoles to monitor the vital signs of man and machine - fragile biological structures that rode in tiny metal cans atop enormous engineering wonders as marginally controlled chemical explosions flung them beyond the safety of our thin biosphere, into the black, frigid hostile environs of space, and into the imaginations of us all.

This was Mission Control for the majority of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space shots. This is where great quantities of sweat pored forth as our first tentative probes went out, as worries about the status of the heat shield were debated, as we all held our breath with the first step onto the moon, as endless agonizing hours of calculation, speculation and experimentation brought Apollo 13 home.

Sitting is this chair and looking out across the rest of the room, I could almost see and hear the activity that had taken place here. If the past manifests itself to us as ghosts, I could feel the ghosts in this room.

As technology has advanced, the old Mission Control room is no longer used for that purpose. It is, very appropriately, now designated as a National Landmark.

From this room we went to the present. You can look at these pictures of the current shuttle Mission Control and see that things have been upgraded a bit.

The old consoles have all been replaced by modern computer monitors. I can just about guarantee you that they're not running MS Windows on these things.

There was no shuttle mission up at the time. Actually, the whole fleet is grounded right now due to the discovery of some cracks in hydrogen lines - something you really don't want leaking. If there had been an actual mission under way, I'm sure that getting on to the floor would not really have been an option.

One thing I learned (there were so many things I learned) is that the Mission Control Center is just the tip of the iceberg. There are "back rooms" where other functions occur, and there is redundancy built into everything. Just as the astronauts plan and practice contingency plans for when things go awry, the control teams also practice to cover unplanned events on the ground, such as the unavailability of certain key personnel.

Our final stop was the International Space Station Mission Control Center. Technically, since this is an ongoing mission, we weren't allowed in here at all. But, once again, Gerry indulged us and got us in the door.

In this one afternoon I acquired a feeling for the nature of the people and machines of the US space program that I have never had before. Meeting the scientists, engineers and astronauts, however briefly, put a human face and a personality on the whole thing. I have always been an enthusiast of the program, and have held the achievements in awe. This experience has enriched and amplified those feelings.

If only I was 20 years younger ...