Space City Houston
Houston is the most populous city in the state of Texas, and the 4th most
populous in the United States over all. As of 2006,
Houston had an estimated
population of 2,144,491, with more than 5.5 million people living in the
Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown metropolitan area, the 6th most populous metropolitan
area in the United States.
Houston is perhaps most famous internationally for being home to NASA's Lyndon
B. Johnson Space Center, which contains the Mission Control Center (MCC-H), the
NASA control center that coordinates and monitors all US manned space missions,
including the Space Shuttle and activities aboard the International Space
Station. On display at the Johnson Space Center is a near complete Saturn V moon
rocket, and an Apollo Command-Service Module (CSM), both of which were
originally prepared for Apollo missions which were cancelled. It is because of
the presence of the Johnson Space Center, as well as the city's other aerospace
connections, that Houston gets its nickname: "Space City".
The city of Houston is also home to the Texas Medical Center (which is the
world's largest concentration of health research and care institutions), the
Port of Houston (which is the busiest port in the United States in terms of
international cargo tonnage, and the second busiest in terms of over all
tonnage), and more Fortune 500 corporations' headquarters than any city save for
New York.
Visitors to Houston will be sure to want to see the
Houston Museum District
(known informally as simply "The Museum District"). This area is home to at
least 16 different museums, including the Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum
(containing the only intact Byzantine frescoes in the Western hemisphere), the
Children's Museum of Houston, the Contemporary Arts Museum, the Houston Museum of
Natural Science, and the Holocaust Museum Houston. Also in the Museum District
are several parks, Houston Zoo (which contains 4,500 animals from over 900
species), and the Miller Outdoor Theatre.
About the Author
For more information about US travel, please visit http://www.travelguide2usa.com.
