If you get a chance, do take one of the behind-the-scenes tours. (The tour I took was offered by the amusement-park-esque “Space Station Houston”, JSC’s official visitor center.) They take you into an observation bay above the old mission control room that was used for the Apollo missions. There’s a magnificent gravity to the banks of astonishingly obsolete machines and displays.

But if the conference is actually going to be on JSC grounds, you might get to see even more than that!