THE ROMANCE OF SPACE, THE IDEALIZATION OF NASA

People also care about NASA because it represents what's right about government, at least in principle. It holds out promise and hope that someone —someone—in charge can get beyond petty arguments about superficial things and actually bring something complicated--like a mission to another planet!-- into being. NASA represents the nation we wish were our own no matter what nation we call home. 

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TYPES OF PEOPLE

Types of people

Types of people

Dog people.

Admit it: you know them. These are the people who believe their pekinese are the bees knees. They're people who can tell you everything about teaching Terriers to talk, walking with Weimeraners, and shearing a Sheltie.

How about car people?

You know the type--the kind of people who can spend two hours on a precious Saturday discussing  whether a straight-six has better torque than a V-eight, assuming proportional engine displacement. (I have no idea whether it does or not, but I overheard this conversation the other day and I couldn't help but be fascinated.)

There are subcultures for everything and this truism is a wellspring for narrative.

Then there are creative people. Actors, painters, musicians: they're simply weird. (It's okay. I'm speaking about ourselves.) What makes a creative person? A creative person experiments with his or her world, all the time. They can't help themselves. They're restless because there are a million possibilities, and only enough time to explore a few. Creative people are flowing over with the need to create, and sometimes they don't even know why themselves.

But wait, aren't LOTS of people creative to some degree? Of the millions of office workers selling insurance and shuffling medical records and ordering plywood shipments for the local hardware store, aren't many of them also into playing the guitar in their free time? Into knitting? Cooking? Building with Lego? I may prefer the bassoon player to the basset house breeder, but that's not the point.

I turn to animators for certain solutions, accountant for others. But the ones I like the most are those who are open, even interested, to learn new things always, even as they make certain disciplines  unique specialties.

But it goes deeper than simply being a subject matter expert. It goes to the marrow, to a person's intangible core. Curious people are different than those who aren't, and I mean no malice when I say that not everyone is curious.

There are types of people who instill confidence in little more than a glance. There are people who make you believe they've got your back, no matter how hard the battle ahead threatens to be. There are people with whom you want to spend your fleeting life, just as there are those who's most basic yes or no answer can make you feel like they're consuming your brief, precious day.

These people too: there are those who look for cheapskate shortcuts. There are those who try to sell you on "good enough". There are those who trade life experiences like used cars, always looking for the next better model. There are people who'll sell you short, run you ragged simply because they can, push you endlessly, not give a damn.

I care about those who look for solutions. I enjoy those who gravitate toward collaboration, even as they are just as interested in focusing like singular laser beams, alone.  Those who are curious, who listen, who push themselves and want to discover new ideas always grab my attention. That's because creativity has no singular solution. There are endless ways to bring ides to life, just as there are endless ideas to bring to life. I'm fascinated by the disciplines that people choose to make their life's work, even if I'm not interested in that particular work itself. (I'm not a dog person, for example.)

But among the many, many types of people out there, I'll still always gravitate to one type of person above all others. Regardless of discipline there's a rare breed who makes you believe in integrity above all, in honest efforts and open exchanges of ideas and civil discourse to discuss the vagaries of whatever it is being discussed no matter how challenging the subject. Those are the types of people with whom I most like to create. Those are the types of people who most fire my soul.

--MS

@michaelstarobin facebook.com/1auglobalmedia facebook.com/michael.starobin

MECHANICS -- A Report from Japan

Heavy metal. 

Heavy metal. 

The choreography rivals precision aerial acrobats. The teamwork reflects the forward line of a pro football team. This is the vanguard of NASA's mechanical engineering corps, and to experience them at their full operational power is to gain a profound appreciation for how much more goes into spaceflight than big, booming rockets.

Ages range from mid-twenties well into mid-sixties. A handful of women in the ranks reflects a slowly changing demographic, but it's still mostly a male crew. A visitor may have to look carefully, however. The clean room "bunny" suits everyone must wear has a way of turning human morphology into ambulatory, genderless marshmallows. They're always funny the first time someone suits up. Then they're not. Proper clean room garb includes non-static jumpsuits embedded with micro-mesh electro-diffusion wires, designed to insure that even the smallest discharge of static electricity has no chance of damaging delicate circuit boards. Face masks, hair bonnets, rubber gloves, and electrostatically inert booties complete the ensemble. Different missions have levels of "clean", necessitating nuanced differences in clean room attire, but generally speaking, wearers get used to the extra layers in no time.

The mechanical team handles physical aspects of satellite readiness. How do you move a delicate, billion dollar bird around the globe? That's mechanical's job.

Wrenches and muscle power come into play, of course, but the mechanical team needs to be knowledgable about a range of disciplines. Working closely with electrical engineers, environmental specialists, satellite designers and more, seemingly simple decisions go through rigorous analysis and consideration before they're implemented lest unintended down-stream consequences accrue.

That is, of course, the plan. When things come down to old fashioned common sense, this is the team you want to have.

Standing next to Mechanical Team Lead Jay Parker, I watch as the crew prepares to extract the satellite from it's L-frame, the mounting skeleton in which it travelled around the world in its shipping box. "See this?" he says. "There's only three inches of clearance between the satellite and the frame. We can't just lift it up and out. Too tight." The massive overhead crane can handle the weight, but the problem is a risk that part of the fragile solar array scrapes the structural girders of the frame. He tells me the plan is to simply release the satellite from it's mounting base, and slide it out of the frame horizontally. To the question about how his guys plan to keep the satellite inside it's narrow safety envelope, he deadpans, "Very carefully." The technique involves little more than horse sense, patience, superb teamwork, and a sculptor's gaze before striking chisel to stone: they're going to eyeball the situation and simply make sure the satellite doesn't swing where it shouldn't.

Twenty-minutes later the satellite hangs in space, suspended from high-tension cables. Free of its shipping skeleton, the team begins moving it slowly across the vast integration facility where it will be attached to a special articulating table. Centimeter by centimeter, the bunny suited experts make these moves look easy. On the way to space, these stately, precision maneuvers on the ground matter just as much as lighting the main engines.