Finding space on Earth during the ultimate extraterrestrial road trip

W Richard Branson claiming that it is "very close" to place passengers in space, and Elon Musk running Boeing to reach Mars, the journey into space is to new to the agenda and I've got a taste of it calls the multi-axis coach, or MAT. This watchtower-churn for potential astronauts is guaranteed to put your head in a spin. On the upside down, I now regret my waffle breakfast and maple syrup with every twist.

Astronauts use the spherical machine to prepare to return to the earth's atmosphere. Attached in a seat in the center of the aircraft, I now understand why men and women who travel to the infinite and beyond are really the best.

MAT is just a part of the Astronaut Training Experience (ATX) at Kennedy Space Center, Florida (admission £ 39). It offers ground travelers like me the opportunity to sample some of the challenging tests facing astronauts en route to weightlessness.

The half-day program costs £ 110, including a shuttle simulator and a microgravity harness – a taste of what candidates have experienced in the BBC series Astronauts: As you need it?

For real astronauts like Sam Durrance, it would have been just another day at the office. The scientist spent 25 days in space during two missions to the International Space Station. Now he is one of eight former astronauts employed to meet and greet ATX visitors

Durrance has degrees in physics and astrogeophysics, so what are the most frequently asked questions? "They want to know how we go to the bathroom in the space – and what the food looks like, none of the answers is very uplifting."

Durrance and his NASA colleagues present themselves in turn role at the daily Lunch with a Astronaut event, which costs £ 22 per person at Kennedy. The buffet is an opportunity to meet a real hero of space, although it is advisable to book at least a week before.

Elsewhere, Kennedy's new attraction is Heroes & Legends, which revisits the pioneering days of spaceflight. A 4D cinema brings the take-off experience to life and visitors can stand apart from a Gemini 9 capsule.

An ominous Redstone rocket – the first US ballistic missile – hangs from the ceiling, while more spaceships in the Garden Rocket. The time of your visit for twilight and the giant structures are spectacularly illuminated against the night sky.

Kennedy is the obvious launching pad for my drive across the south to find the best places related to space in America. The road trip will cross seven states and end in Flagstaff, Arizona, where astronauts train to drive the original lunar buggy into the Sixites.

If you think the idea of ​​space tourism is still in the sky, NASA is already working alongside Musk's SpaceX on a mission to send two anonymous civilians around the moon. Musk, the multi-billionaire behind PayPal and Tesla, wants to make space travel as easy as jumping on a plane.

I timed my space voyage to coincide with a missile takeoff at Kennedy but the mission was delayed. The launches are visible from almost anywhere on the Florida Peninsula, with details posted at kennedyspacecenter.com

Seeing my dismay, the Ritz-Carlton Orlando concierge has done his best to explain the rush. experience of a launch: "You can feel your pumping heart – the thrust of the engines vibrate through the landscape.There is a flash of fire, the ground seems to move, then the flame rises in the sky." [19659002] Really excited, I left for the first part of my trip. From Orlando, it's a nine-hour drive from the John C Stennis Space Center – a rocket test base on the Mississippi-Louisiana border initially used to develop the Apollo spacecraft.

I drove a Lamborghini Huracán, the closest a road rocket. It has air conditioning and cruise control, unlike the Corvette Stingrays most astronauts were given to drive in the 1960s.

New Orleans is a good base for visiting Stennis. It was late afternoon when I reached the Big Easy, but already my phone was buzzing with two emergency flood alerts. The flood was soon coming. Soon the I-10 highway that runs on stilts over the city became a parking lot as motorists fled away from the water.

Downtown access around Canal Street was blocked. I was terribly close to the Ritz-Carlton, I was supposed to stay, but even the city's streetcars were stuck in floodwaters. The locals seemed completely helpless in the storm, even though it was clear that even after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, defenses against floods are still helpless in the face of a serious downpour.

The next day, it took less than an hour to reach Stennis. The Infinity Science Center (admission £ 13) is the official visitor complex and offers a pedagogical approach, compared to Kennedy's razzmatazz theme park. One guide said the best time to visit is when a rocket engine test is taking place, although this is lucky because there is no official program.

All about the science center is great, including the engine stage of a Saturn V rocket used to power Apollo. Standing under the propeller, it was hard to imagine anything as huge as this one.

The exhibitions and the reception buildings are spread over a large area, so the center organized a bus tour of the main sites. Do not miss the Space Gallery, which houses space suit technology – some look pretty comical, like they dated Jetsons

I arrived in Houston five hours later and the Buffalo Bayou had been flooded. I was staying at the Sam Hotel downtown, unaware that two weeks later, the area would be devastated by Hurricane Harvey. The nearby Johnson Space Center is where NASA's mission control directs flights from the Kennedy Space Center launch pad at 1,600 km.

The visitor complex – Houston Space Center (admission £ 23) – has an impressive array of attractions, all overshadowed by the 747 aircraft parked outside with a replica of the loaded shuttle on top. The main hall is also filled with interactive and practical exhibits, such as rocket and shuttle simulators.

Starship Gallery includes the Apollo 17 control module, still burned since its re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere. Another area has a collection of lunar rocks, a lunar training vehicle and a full-size Skylab workout module.

The highlight of the tour was a chance to get into the replica of the shuttle that sits on the 747. Enjoy the scale I recommend climbing the stairs in the building access eight floors. There is an elevator, if it seems to go a little further.

Continuing west through San Antonio and from the Mexican border, even the landscape of this part of Texas felt a bit of space. The huge rooftops and lunar desert have turned the sand landscape into a sort of place from another world, where few seem to survive the extreme heat.

That evening, at the V6 cafe of the casual Gage hotel, in Marathon, I was told about strange lights appearing on the desert in the nearby town of Marfa. Everyone seemed to have an extraterrestrial story to tell here.

As if to prove it, just across the border in New Mexico is the International Museum of UFOs (admission: £ 3.50). Roswell has been famous for a series of UFO sightings since 1947, when a strange form of saucer appeared in the sky during a storm. The locals have embraced alien since – culminating in the old cinema remodeling as a UFO museum. The building claims to be a UFO research center, but some of the exhibits originate directly from a 1950s science fiction film.

The next day, en route to El Paso, I visited the McDonald Observatory, near Fort Davis. In the wild backwaters of Texas, the domed structures seemed to have landed in space.

The weekly Star Parties (£ 10) are extremely popular and offer an educational tour of the galaxy. There are limited spaces for these evening sessions, so be sure to book at mcdonaldobservatory.org to avoid a lost trip.

If you have always wanted to see a constellation closely, it's the place to do it. Just a glance at the surface of the moon through the huge Ritchey-Christian telescope impressed me with what these incredible machines can do.

The last 800 miles to the west on I-10 took two days. Temperatures exceeded 40 ° C (104 ° F) and the road often disappeared into an act of illusion caused by the mist of heat. My final destination was Arizona – and for good reason.

The rocky landscape in front of my window at the Phoenician Hotel near Phoenix was a clue. Just up the road near Flagstaff, NASA has turned an old volcano into an astronaut training ground to test the original lunar rover in 1967.

Thousands of tons of gold. explosives were used to recreate the craters of the Sea of ​​Tranquility. site where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would make their historic landing two years later. NASA used satellite photographs of the moon itself to get the land at Cinder Lake – although most of the landscape seems naturally lunar.

I was disappointed because the Crater Field 2 site is now invaded by bikers. However, walking a little farther in the desert, I found Crater Field 1. Further away from Highway 89, it has survived the test of time and could easily double for the surface of the moon

The footprints of astronauts who trained here during the Apollo era have long since vanished. Under my feet, the porous volcanic gravel creaked like huge grains of sand. However, unlike sand, when I went down one of the craters, the shape of the hole remained intact.

Only a handful of the 12 men who walked on the surface of the moon are still alive today – Armstrong himself died in 2012 One day maybe the boot marks on the surface of the moon will be the ultimate goal for tourists from the space?

Durrance believes that we are only a few decades of passenger flights to the moon: "Absolutely, we had the technology 50 years ago, the commercial rockets that we are about to see in the sky are much more advanced They are the beginning of a great adventure.

"Of course, there is nothing like space on Earth. I am too old to go back, but what I have lived there will live with me forever. "

The Essential

Hayes & Jarvis (hayesandjarvis.co.uk) offers a 13-night trip to the United States from Orlando to Phoenix on a basis of only £ 2,195 per person. offer includes "standard" car rental and return of international flights from Gatwick with British Airways

A Lamborghini hired at Orland Exotic Car Rentals (orlandoexoticcarrentals.com) will cost you rather more – from 1 £ 160 a day