Delta Chapter's Trip
to Houston, TX

Day 1: Schlitterbahn Water Park

It was a cold Texas morning when we rolled up to the water park. 38 degrees! The operations manager showed us around the park. He gave us a history lesson of the creation of the rides and turned them on for us. Some of the rides have features that they do not use with the public. For example the boogie board ride can open up and become a 9 foot tube wave for surfing. Apparently its not very safe if you don't know what your doing. There are 5 pumps that push the water around all of the rides and the not so lazy river. The pumps have about 20 feet above ground and then go another 20 feet below ground. Because it is still quite cold the outside attractions were not open yet, but he showed us some of them anyway. The indoor part of the park has walls and a ceiling that are completely retractable so that it becomes an outside water park in under two minutes. The inside of the water park was not very well insulated and was clearly not made for 38 degree weather. Thankfully we would not be swimming. The most interesting part of the park to me was the chlorination system. It is automated, as you would expect for a high tech park, but it is also integratedonline. The operations manager receives a text message if the concentration levels drop or rise above a certain point and he can then go online while at home or anywhere else and adjust them.

Day 2: NASA, Johnson Space Center

We arrived at the Johnson Space Center for our tour a little before 11 am on Monday morning. We were able to take pictures of most of the stuff that we wanted to, but there were a few places were pictures were not allowed. The tour was very interesting. They gave us the history of the space program from the 60's to what they expect in the next 100 years. NASA did push fairly hard for us to write our congressmen and demand more manned space flights. We got to visit the training version of the space station. It is a complete mock up of the real thing, just in a big building on earth. Some of its pieces are layed out differently because going up and down in the space station in outer space is much easier than on Earth with gravity. The tour finished with the viewing of one of the Apallo missions (17 I think) that did not end up flying due to financial reasons. The rocket has been laid on its side. It is over 300 feet in length! Thats more than a football field. The tour director walked us through the multiple stages of the liftoff phase and the different fuels used. After the tour we had some time to watch a 25 minute Imax video, touch a moon rock, watch a "living in space" demonstration, and successfully land the space shuttle on a simulator.

Day 3: Tour of Texas City Oil Refinery and Chemical Plant through BP

Our tour guide was a Chemical Engineer that has been with the company for almost 40 years! We had to ride in a BP vehicle to get there and were warned not to take any pictures because we were being watched. Our guide warned that other people had stopped to take pictures of just the outside and were approached by the FBI, state police, and BP security within minutes. The tour was awesome for the Chemical Engineers in the group, but for the other majors it was a little over their head. The scale of the facility was something that could only be seen from the sky. We spend close to an hour going over a 15' by 15' satellite image of the refinery. It is interesting how old most of the refinery is and that this refinery handles up to 40 different types of crude oil per year. Most other facilities can only handle 1 and definitely not more than 5. This means that different types and amounts of products are created from the process year round and the BP can by the cheapest crude on the market that other companies cannot use.

Day 4: Ocean Star Offshore Drilling Rig and Galveston Tour

The Ocean Star Offshore Drilling Rig has been decommissioned and pulled into the Port of Galveston. We spent the afternoon on a self guided tour of the facility. There were video demonstrations, real work equipment, and lots of exhibits.