I am staying in a fairly large hotel in Austin, Texas. Austin has avoided the devastation of hurricane Ike and indeed has been a key shelter area for those fleeing Ike or the earlier Gustav hurricanes. Houston, the city where NASA's Mission Control is based has been devastated so it is obvious to ask who is controlling missions like the International Space Station. The Austin Statesman newspaper claimed to have the answer today.

A brief statement from NASA on Thursday set a minor Hurricane Ike odyssey in motion: "The International Space Station Flight Control Room at Mission Control in Houston was shut down Thursday morning. Station flight control continued through backup teams located near Austin and Huntsville, Ala."

Logically, a team escaping the giant storm would head up to Alabama to guide the space station from the ground, since a back-up control room stands at the ready there.

But near Austin? Is there a secret control room here?

Calls to Central Texas public agencies, evacuation officials, hospitality industry leaders and hotel managers Friday failed to produce results.

"Yes, a team of flight controllers with high-speed laptop computers has moved to an Austin-area hotel and is controlling the space station through high-rate data lines back to computers at Mission Control in Houston," said NASA spokesman Michael Curie late Friday. "Mission Control has power and generators in case it loses power. A backup plan in case Mission Control loses power will hand control to another tram of Johnson Spacecraft Center flight controllers who traveled to Huntsville, Ala."

A hotel near Austin. But where?

"We don't have an exact location, other than they are in the Austin area," Curie said on Saturday. "They will remain until Houston's Mission Control Center returns to normal operation. It is too early to know how long it will be before that happens."

 In my childhood I recall seeing Mission Control in Houston with rows of computer terminals and a big map dealing with Apollo moon shots. I realise that computing hs moved on massively since then. We are not only past mainframes but mobile computing has become the norm. We are regularly hearling of sensitive UK Government data getting lost when an official loses his laptop after work in the pub. However, despite that I find it bizarre that the space station might be controlled from laptops further down my hotel corridor.

This is especially odd when there is a fully functional backup control centre in Alabama. It was surely not for the Ike parties that were running in Austin on Friday night.

However, if the statement "a team of flight controllers with high-speed laptop computers has moved to an Austin-area hotel and is controlling the space station through high-rate data lines back to computers at Mission Control in Houston" is true they cannot really be in my hotel. Broadband speed here is adequate but not stunning!