“Houston, we have no problem.”

Familiar words with a new spin on them, from Bono, five songs into the band’s unforgettable set on the Houston stop of the U2 360° Tour.  The theme for the tour is space, and the centerpiece is an enormous spaceship-looking cover whose shape reminded me of a giant X-Box controller. The stage itself is round with moving bridges that connect to an outer circle, like one of Saturn’s rings.

While stagehands were putting the finishing touches on the cosmic apparatus, The Edge, Bono, and his two sons visited Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center. Bono spoke via satellite with astronauts on the International Space Station, concluding the 20-minute conversation with, “We’ve had our breath taken away this morning to be led in here…it is an amazing church of possibilities, and…we’re here to pay homage.”

The set began with Bowie’s “Space Oddity”, followed by Larry Mullen Jr’s brief opening drum solo, one that he recently admitted to Rolling Stone he has “waited 35 years” to perform.  One by one, the rest of the band appeared, bassist Adam Clayton, guitarist The Edge, and finally, Bono, wearing his signature Armani shades and all black attire.

The set list did not deviate from the Dallas stop two days earlier. The band began with “Breathe”, and plowed through “Get On Your Boots”, “Magnificent”, “Mysterious Ways” and “Beautiful Day”.

Bono took his first opportunity to stop the show by asking the crowd, “What do you think of our little spaceship?” He spoke about the common thread between the space-themed 360° Tour and Houston, adding, “We feel right at home here in Houston, home of space stations.” Introductions of the band members then led into a well-blended mix of songs both old and new: “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and “Stuck in a Moment”, “No Line on the Horizon”, and “Elevation”.

To continue the space theme, the band dusted off 1995’s “Your Blue Room”, a song that blends vocals by Bono and Sinead O’Connor along with Mission Control chatter. Although Bono has previously said that it is one of his favorite U2 songs, the first time the band performed it live was in Chicago last month at Soldier Field.

Next, my personal highlight of the night came with “The Unforgettable Fire” followed by “City of Blinding Lights”, two of my all-time favorites in the extensive catalog that U2 has created throughout their 35-year career. The virtual space station shone spotlights from the four claw-like corners up into the sky above, prompting the audience to gaze upon our vast universe.

The crowd responded with elation when the next block of three rocked Reliant like never before: “Vertigo”, a disco version of “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight”, and “Sunday Bloody Sunday”.  Then, in a welcome moment of reflection on current social injustices, Bono spoke of Aung San Suu Kyi, the politically-repressed leader of Burma who has spent 14 of the last 20 years under house arrest. Bono dedicated set closer “Walk On” to the Burmese leader of democracy, which concluded with several dozen volunteers circling the outer stage wearing paper masks of Suu Kyi, which can be found on the band’s website.

While the audience cheered and encouraged the band to return for the first of two encores, video monitors showed a filmed message from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, sharing his vision of world unity, concluding his message with, ”God will put a wind at our back and a rising road ahead, if we work with each other as one.”

After “One” and “Where the Streets Have No Name”, the band returned to the stage once more for its final encore, Bono clad in a jacket that seemed to emit laser beams throughout the sea of fans, with “Ultraviolet”, “With or Without You”, and the beautifully-themed “Moment of Surrender”, while Bono encouraged the crowd to light up their cell phones in order to create our own version of the Milky Way.

Indeed, U2 had no problem keeping the crowd of 70,000 entertained with a visual and sonic production like no one had ever seen.  No problem at all.