willow_red

Ladies and gentlemen, here you have it: the full account of my time at the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. As this entry promises to be rather lengthy, I will divide it into several cut sections. Feel free to skim.

Sunday

Between Sci-Fi Club and packing, I got about 5.5 hours of sleep on Saturday night, which made the drive down to Colorado Springs a little extra fun. Unfortunately, Denver radio stations tend to cut out right before the Springs, but I brought CDs with me.

Despite getting off at the wrong exit (taking the scenic route through Colo Spgs business district), I found the Broadmoor International Center in time for the 11:30 organizational meeting. I'd guess there were about 20 or so volunteers for transportation. We went over the basics of what we were supposed to do, how things would work, etc. Then we broke down the schedule and started assigning pickups and departures to people. Someone had called dibs on Buzz Aldrin a week or two ago, and there was no one else I particularly had my heart set on, so I said I'd take whatever. The one thing I hoped was that I wouldn't be on the pickup run for Sean O'Keefe (see Tuesday).

The meeting ran rather long, so Meredith, Cherissa, and I were about starving by the time we went to lunch at 2:00. We wanted to go hiking up at Garden of the Gods, but the temperature was dropping and none of us had warm enough clothing.

I went over to Lucky Neko, and it was closed! Lucky Neko Anime and Hobbies is no more! The sign was still there, but the store was gutted and the phone number has been disconnected. I guess the Neko wasn't so lucky....

By this time, I had driven in and out of snow and low visibility enough that I was very happy I didn't go hiking. Instead, I went to look for a hotel room. The south end of town was completely booked between the Symposium and the returning servicemen. I had forgotten how military-dominated Colo Spgs is. Eventually, I found a room at the Microtel, about 20 minutes away from the Broadmoor. I went swimming, then went to bed early so I could report in by 8:00am.

Monday

My first assignment on Monday morning was to pick up Mr. Richard Allen at the Colorado Springs Airport. He is the CEO of Space Center Houston. For those who have never been there, that is kind of a children's museum across the street from Johnson Space Center. They have nifty educational displays, an IMAX theater, and they do the public tours of JSC. Mr. Allen was a nice guy, and everything went smoothly.

I only had one official assignment for Monday, but wanted to stick around for the opening ceremonies, so I went looking for odd jobs that needed to be done. I wandered around, watching the exhibition hall take shape, and ended up helping to wrap presents for the speakers and guests.

Let me take a moment here to say how freaking cool the exhibition hall is. I don't know how much money went into that place, but you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a plasma screen. Think about the displays for Career Fair, and crank it up a couple of orders of magnitude. Kodak had a nifty little space video with drum 'n' bass music in the background; Ball had scale models of some of their recent spacecraft; AGI had a wall of monitors, pictures, and for some reason, a freezer full of ice cream; Boeing had an arch that looked like a cross between the Gateway to the West in St. Louis and the Stargate; Pratt & Whitney had scale models of rocket engines; NASA had Moon and Mars globes and a looped video of the President's speech from January on multiple plasma screens; etc. I could go on, but I'll say that the coolest one was from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. They had a full-out theater set up in the middle of the hall. Inside was a quarter-sphere projection screen surrounded by mirrors such that it looked like there was a two-meter sphere floating in the middle of the floor. During the video, if you didn't look too closely, it looked like Earth was spinning beneath you. I told the other volunteers that if they only saw a single display, they had to see that one.

This wouldn't be my life if I didn't run into people I knew unexpectedly. Sure enough, Eric from my Russian classes way back is now working at General Dynamics, and some guy I didn't know very well in Sigma Gamma Tau (aero honor society) is working at Analex. My world is small; conferences make it smaller. More on this on Tuesday.

Shortly before the opening ceremonies, people were milling around in the registration area. I saw several people I recognized from the Mars Exploration Rover team...including one I used to work with at Space Grant who I mentioned previously. We chatted briefly, and he does remember me. It wasn't until later that I found out that the team was there to get the brand new Jack Swigert award (Kevin Bacon for those who have seen Apollo 13).

The opening ceremonies were quite entertaining. The huge room was standing room only. CNN's space reporter, Miles O'Brien (I really have to wonder if he gets teased about having the same name as the Enterprise-D's transporter chief and DS9's chief engineer) ran the show. I don't know if he had been drinking, or if his ego is just that huge, or what, but he got it into his head that he could rap. I think the groans of the audience could be heard in Denver. We sincerely hope that he never tries that again. He asked for a drumbeat from the Colorado Springs Philharmonic Orchestra sitting behind him, and they refused. I'm glad those people have standards. A couple of videos were shown while the orchestra played John Williams music *swoon*. Unfortunately, the videos were poorly edited, but at least the music was good. The first was a retrospective of the last 20 years in space to a ten-minute version of the theme from ET: The Extraterrestrial. Good choice, but it does get long at ten minutes. The second video was a review of the previous year in space to the theme from Superman. Because I'm such a John Williams fangirl, I obtained tinny recordings of these songs on my camera. At the end, the orchestra played again, this time with a vocalist singing "All That Jazz."

illyanarasputin could probably tell me what musical that's from.

There was then a reception with food in the exhibition hall. At 9:00, they put on a fireworks show over the lake. It was getting a little chilly by this time, but conveniently, the Broadmoor had open fires for people to gather around. Is there anything they didn't think of? I got to chat with all kinds of interesting people while standing around there.

After the fireworks show, I was walking in the general direction of my car but stopped on the bridge to listen to Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He was giving an impromptu star talk for a couple of boys who couldn't have been more than about twelve years old. I got to talk with him a little bit afterward, and he's a really nice guy. He genuinely wants to help people learn more about the universe, and that's just cool. He also has this really nifty green laser pointer that shines a beam long enough that it's easy to point at stars in the sky. This thing is so powerful that it's actually illegal. (I found this out when I asked where I could get one.)

Tuesday

Each of Tuesday's topics could easily make their own long entry, but if I don't write this now, I never will.

The first panel I went to was The New NASA Vision -- How We Got Here, What It Means. I was most impressed with James Kennedy, director of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Meredith picked him up at the airport on Monday, and he was surprised to find out that a car was sent for him. He also turned into an excited fanboy when telling her about the time he met John Glenn. Anyway, the thing that really impressed me about him during the panel was how he proposed to turn Bush's speech into a reality for America's space program. The key was this: space needs to become non-partisan again. A survey was done in which people were asked if they favored the plan to go to the Moon and Mars. For half, the question was phrased as being the plan of the United States. 48% said yes, 48% said no, and 4% were undecided. For the other half, the question was rephrased as being the plan of the Bush Administration. 43% said yes, 52% said no, and 5% were undecided. Thus everyone needs to feel ownership of this plan, not attribute it to a single politician or group of politicians. That is the only way to ensure that it will survive multiple elections.

After that, I killed some time, ate lunch as fast as I could (food was provided for volunteers), and jetted off to take Mr. Richard Sullivan, editor of Life Magazine to the airport. From there, due to a schedule change, we went directly to the Jet Center to meet Sean O'Keefe's NASA private jet. For those who don't know, O'Keefe is the current NASA administrator and the "man who killed the Hubble Space Telescope." Three cars were sent, and mine ended up being extra, so we didn't take anyone back to the hotel. However, I did meet Mr. O'Keefe as he got off the plane, shook his hand, welcomed him to Colorado, and otherwise bit my tongue. It was just as well he went in another car. I have yet to hear much good about that man. Apparently, he's too good to wear a name badge, so all of security was scrambling to find pictures of him so they wouldn't get on his bad side by stopping him in the halls. (Note: Most of the volunteers were current or former military and knew jack about NASA. I, OTOH, knew jack about any of the defense stuff.)

At 4:00, I went to the panel on The Moon, Mars, & Beyond. While not as packed as the morning panel, I found this one much more interesting. It was chaired by Dr. Tyson, whom I met the night before. As it turns out, he and another panel member, Dr. Paul Spudis, are on the President's Commission on Moon, Mars and Beyond. Also on this panel was Dr. John Grunsfeld, NASA's chief scientist and the last astronaut to work on Hubble, as well as JPL's deputy director, and Dr. Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society. This panel threatened at times to turn into a knock-down, drag-out fight. Most of the panelists were well-behaved, but Zubrin is something of a zealot and tends to go nuts when he thinks someone is listening. That and he was trying to sell books. My opinion of him drops a little every time I see him talk. Spudis, OTOH, really impressed me. He is touted as the "Moon guy" on the commission because he advocates going to the Moon before Mars and is the antithesis of Zubrin. However, he explained his position, and it is something I very much agree with. Paraphrasing what he said, the goal is not Mars -- it isn't even the Moon. Rather the goal is to make humanity a space-faring society. I officially think Spudis is cool now. Plus, he handled Zubrin's wild accusations with aplomb. I swear, the way Zubrin freaks out, I swear the man is going to have a heart attack during a panel one of these days. And really, that has to be the worst combover I've ever seen. He's fooling precisely no one. Actually, his hair kind of reminds me of that one guy on South Park who always says, "I am above the law!" right before slicking his hair down.

On my way out of the auditorium, I nearly bumped shoulders with a gray-haired man about my height. He looked a little familiar, and that was when I caught a glimpse of the nametag: Buzz Aldrin. I didn't get to speak to him since people were herding back and forth, but I stood within one foot of Buzz Aldrin. How much does that rock?

Tuesday Evening

Around dinner time on Tuesday, I was cutting through the exhibition hall on my way to the volunteer trailer and stopped by the Ball exhibit. I saw a familiar profile talking to one of the HR people and flipping through brochures. Then I saw the "USA" logo embroidered on the shirt. "Mike?!?" I said. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it was my old boss from USA/NASA, aka the coolest boss I've ever had. He turned around and gave me a hug. It was great to see him, and we got to chat for a little while.

There's no way to relate the conversation without sounding like I'm bragging, so you'll just have to trust me that this is really what he said. The rest of the group that I knew is still there, doing the same things, but they've had no end of trouble in replacing me. In the past two years since I left, they have gone through three other people and are on the fourth now. Mike said he cried for a week after I left. I apologized and said that I felt bad about it too, but there wasn't much I could do about it. Then he called over a couple of his USA colleagues and introduced me to them as, "Sandy Pitzak, the perfect flight controller, who got certified in record time and left the next day." Well, it wasn't the next day, but close enough. Incidentally, my record still stands and remains unthreatened. Apparently, I'm something of a legend down there now. *blushes* They're still using the software tools I created, and everyone's life is easier because of them. The GUI I did while telecommuting is on a new version now, and it helped ease the rest of the group into using STK.

Mike asked what I'm doing these days, and I gave him my Ball business card. I asked if he had heard of the Deep Impact mission, and he hadn't, so I took him over to the nifty 1:4 scale model that was front and center at the exhibit. I also told him that I was looking at transferring to power subsystems. He commented that it would be like going home again. He also made me write a note to the other PROs on the back of a Ball brochure because he said they wouldn't believe him that he saw me there. I also gave him a second business card for Natalie and asked him to keep in touch. I've meant to e-mail Natalie a number of times over the past year or so, but it hasn't happened. Maybe we'll get in contact again now. Mike said he was planning to come back next year, so I hope to see him then.

This was so much of an ego boost that I can't begin to describe it. It's good to be reminded once in a while that I am capable of doing something that makes a difference in a company, especially when I do so little these days. I really needed this, and I didn't even know how much. The conversation I had with Mike kept me smiling for the rest of the day, and even a couple of days later. The timing on this was perfect too. Last year would have been much too soon for me to deal with this. It also made me have more confidence for when I went to talk to the head of the Ball Power group on Thursday.

Okay, that was even longer than I thought it would be. I apologize that it took so long to post, but I've been working on this one for a few days. If you don't want to read a dissertation, start with the last section and work your way backward until you get sick of hearing me ramble.