An Hour with the STS-132 Crew

Last Thursday became a very memorable day, since I attended our center's event for honoring and welcoming the STS-132 , Atlantis's Final mission, crew. Yes, I was in the audience here. It was not the first time I heard a crew talk about their experience soon after they did a spectacular job, but this crew definitely stood out among my previous memories of such events. They were unbelievably funny and joyful. They cracked up the audience. If it were not for their suits and we did not know any better, one could think we were attending a stand up comedy show, a very good and scientific one!

Forget about not being too formal to refer to themselves as captain this or commander that with their last names, they were even beyond the first name basis.  They all had special funny nicknames for each other, most of which I forgot by now. They had made a nice movie of their adventure, from before they launched, till the launch moment, during the mission and spacewalk, and finally of coming back to the Earth.  They had upbeat rock and roll songs for the launch and landing section and had a dramatic change to a slow romantic piano song when they were floating and dancing in the shuttle in space.  They mentioned there are three things that kids get excited about: rock and roll, space exploration, and dinosaurs.   We incorporated the first two in our movie and we brought a dinosaur with ourselves instead.  They were talking about their oldest crew member Dr. Sellers.  He was originally British with a nice accent, but he is more special to us because he had worked at Goddard as a research scientist before becoming an astronaut.  Poor guy was attacked by his teammates for his accent, for being a doctor, and for his age.  They were having more fun than us.  It was then that I realized I pronounce our center's name the British way like him: "God - aaard",  they made fun of him each time he was going to use the word, as opposed to "God- erd", the American way.  Hmm... now I had two, no three things in common with Dr. Sellers: we were both doctors, worked at Goddard, and pronounced the center's name the same way.  Maybe I should fill out that astronaut application.  After all, I am probably around the same age when he started!  At the end of the presentation an audience asked Dr. Sellers "How did you transition from being a research scientist to being an astronaut?", to which one of his crew members immediately responded "very badly!".

They started by asking how many of us have seen a shuttle launch on TV, almost everyone in the room raised their hands.  "How many have seen one from the Cape in Florida", more than half of the room raised their hand, proudly I should say (ahem, ahem).  Surprised and threatened that maybe they are not that unique any more, he continued "How many have ridden one during a launch?"  Yes, they won. Dominic Antonelli, the pilot, wanted to share his feelings during the launch.  "It is an amazing feeling, very hard to describe", he mentioned.  "The closest explanation I have found for it is it is like being on top of a rocket"!  He was commended by his team members for keeping the toilet on the shuttle very clean all the time!

Then, there was astronaut Garrett Reisman, significantly shorter than the rest (well, I am finding more and more common features with astronauts).  So, other tall handsome astronauts made fun of his height.  Apparently earlier that week the crew had visited President Obama in the Oval Office, where the crew made fun of his height in front of the president, yes in the Oval Office!  Apparently president Obama had told them to "knock it off guys"!  The happy Garrett continued by reminding us that ever since then whenever these guys make fun of my height, they are in direct violation of a presidential order.  It was not just his height he was famous for, but his strength and power.  The video of how he installed a huge Satellite dish on the ISS was amazing; yes, we all know things are weightless in space, but fighting that also requires a lot of power.  He mentioned with the shuttle program ending, and now that we have experience installing dishes, we are sending our resumes to the cable and satellite companies.  You can call us 9 to 5 and we come to your house and install your TV satellite dish!  It was not long before he was almost done with his presentation that he pleaded to the audience "can someone please call the White House?"

Then, there was Mission Specialist Michael Good, who was most proud of being the only one among his crew members who served on the last Hubble Servicing Mission (SM4).  He was having the time of his life being at the home of Hubble where SM4 was supported.  It was like being in a pep rally.  Every time he mentioned Hubble, we clapped. Finally, it was time for him to do the honor of awarding the Silver Snoopy Award.  Two employees were awarded for their extraordinary service.   One of them was so special to Mike Good, because it was awarded to Dr. Lisa Mazzuca for her handling all the Integration and Test tasks for SM4, for which she was Snooped very carefully.  As her name was called, I was thrilled.  We have been working on the same proposal with a mutual colleague, and I could not have thought of a better occasion to meet her for the first time.  I wished right there and then that our proposal gets accepted because I cannot wait to start working with her.

It was one of the best one-hours of my life.  I left pumped with joy, optimism, hope, thinking anything is possible and I could move mountains.  It is amazing how much positive energy you can get in one hour.  May the Shuttle Program get extended, or the Constellation Program be resumed.  We shall continue.

Lessons Learned? Really?

"Learn from the mistakes of others- you can never live long enough to make them all yourself."

John Luther

Throughout centuries, we humans have evolved in so many ways: physically, emotionally, socially, technically, etc. We have done so to meet our needs and handle natural disasters. We have managed to travel long distances, supply food to the most remote places, and collaborate for the exchange of services. We have learned a lot to get to this point, about ourselves, our relationships with others, our planet, our universe, and mainly how to preserve and communicate what we have learned before. For example, after Newton discovered gravity and his results were accepted in the scientific community, next generations' physicists, continued working from his premises. It does not mean that they took the results and theories of the past as the whole unquestionable truth. Rather they did not cycle through the same old thought processes that failed over and over. They identified when a theory of the past would fail, or provided proofs in support of them. Physicists after Newton kept finding pitfalls of his theories and tried to find better ones that addressed those shortcomings. Or, Copernicus gave a theory that Sun is the center of our planetary system not the Earth. Later, Galileo was punished for making observations that proved this theory and he had to live in house arrest because he did not agree with the Church's idea on the subject. Physicists today do not start from scratch and prove all the theorems that were proven before or find away to prove the ones that were refuted in the past. Of course having an understanding of the methodology and the thinking process that led them to those results is helpful for making future discoveries, but we simply cannot afford to learn everything from scratch for ourselves.

What puzzles me is that while the fact that we have to benefit from our past generations' knowledge and experiences in physics, math, medicine, etc, is widely practiced and accepted among humans, when it comes to our personal lives, choices we make to lead our day to day activities, we question and experience every different way of having a quality life. For example, it has taken generations to establish and institutionalize service providers for health care in hospitals or education in schools and universities. Now, many parents question all the past experiences and humans progress for developing good educational systems; they home school their kids during the times that we are more than ever connected to other humans across the globe. Similarly, many people go through a lengthy trial and error process to determine what is the best way to earn a living, spend the hours in a day, etc. It is as if one day, they become like Thales, thinking maybe he was right and everything is made of water. The next day, they become Anaximenes thinking everything is made of air, then they make their way through earth and fire, and eventually to atoms, quarks, and the string theory, and later M-theory. They question the concept of exchanging goods and services via a monetary system that was created and practiced since the early civilizations thousands of years ago. They end up having all sorts of revolutionary ideas about how they think would be the best way to live their lives, forgetting that through out the history, people advanced in making things, establishing organizations and institutions, to be at their service, to facilitate satisfying those needs, and thus free up more of our time and resources instead of wasting them on doing the most basic and simple things because we have to learn the lessons by ourselves. Why do we ignore all the lessons that have been passed to us through generations? Do we go back to make a phone call to a central system and ask an operator to dial it for us instead of using our wireless phones? Why do we have to go back thinking we can live without schools, enough money, social interactions, cultural exchanges; without good nutrition, sleep, giving and receiving emotions? So often, people spend so much time, effort, and energy trying to fight or ignore the outcomes of civilizations and humanity, that they forget why they chose to do so to begin with. Years may pass and then they may come to the conclusion that it would have been nice to have a stable shelter or the ability to obtain one, have the ability and freedom to travel, have insurance, etc. Why do we tend to ignore all the past experiences and lessons learned of our ancestors when it comes to conducting our personal ways of life?

You can run, but you cannot hide!

Negar was waiting in Dulles airport for arrival of a family member. All of a sudden, she felt the weight of someone's stare on her back. Those that make you naturally turn back to look. She saw her. Was it her? It has been about six years since the last time she saw Naima. She was not sure. She turned back quickly. They were checking each other out for a while from a distance. Both of them were not sure and their uncertainty and doubt itself reassured them they must be right in recognizing each other. Negar checked the announcement board. A flight from Saudi Arabia had just landed. It must be her, waiting for a family member, she concluded.

Naima was cute and flirtatious in graduate school. She used to wear clothes in see-through fabrics, short cuts, showing a decent amount of skin. She had created such a soap opera in a male dominant department. She used to go out with different guys, break up with each after a short period, and use the next one to make the previous one jealous. There was a tense atmosphere every time she entered a lounge or classroom. Soon she started having problems with her adviser. A department staff, an old lover of hers who was heart broken, quit his position after many years of service. Soon, it was not her place to stay anymore either. She left the program with a Masters, accepting a job that could sponsor her work visa.

Now, six years later she was in a colorful scarf, jeans, and a nice long sleeve shirt. Later at home, Negar googled Naima. Yes, there she was at the most prestigious technical university of the U.S., as part of a program for empowering Saudi women. Her photo shows her in Islamic cover. Negar tried hard not to judge her. Maybe she is truly religious now. Maybe she does not care for a prestigious certificate and high paying position in Saudi Arabia. Maybe she does. Why should she care? Ah, she remembered. Her heart was among the many hearts Naima had stepped on while trying to climb a mountain. Negar had forgotten all about that. She must have gotten a whole new heart. One that Naima cannot break or touch anymore. How good it had felt passing her by freer than ever.

Apple*

A ball of red or a
Piece of fruit
Placed in bowl
Left on a table for
Everyone to share.

* Natalie's first poem, for which she won an award in a competition. Her aunt is proud of her. I asked her to send me her poem. So, she did. She wrote at the end "show them my poem". So, I did. I do not know who she meant by "them", maybe she knows about this blog, or that I talk about my nieces to my friends. Kids are smart and feel everything anyways.

Be right or happy? Do we have to choose?

"Whose side are you on?", "Do not take his/her side!", are commonly heard among lovers, friends, or family members, when one person has a different opinion or belief from the other one. There are many people who confuse love and support with being in agreement all the time, and I am not just talking about having different opinions about different topics. No, sometimes people want you to deny facts, pure logic, just to prove your love and support!

For example, if you know the meaning of a word that they think it means the exact opposite thing from what it really does, they want you to believe them. Even if in private, not in front of a crowd, you open the dictionary to teach them something new, they take it as a personal attack as opposed to you wanting them to know the correct meaning, not wanting them to be humiliated by using or understanding the word in its opposite meaning. They rather not know it than to learn it from you. They do not see it as a learning experience, rather you proving them wrong. There are other forms of support people seek in order for you to prove your love. They may not want you to socialize with a particular friend or family member just because they do not like him/her, or that they see them as a treat to the relationship they are having with you.

There are not that many people who make a stance for logic, truth, honesty, and doing what is right. What hurts is that often times a person knows they are taking a wrong or illogical stance, but they do it anyways to make the other person happy. As Dr. Phil says: "Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?". I agree so many things are worthless to argue about, and after all life is too short to spend it arguing. But why do people have to lie, or act the way they do not approve of deep inside, to be happy? Who says there has to be a choice? Does it mean we cannot be our true selves and be happy in a relationship? Why cannot we be open to the idea of learning from each other and value growing in our relationships instead of thinking the other person is putting us down, or trying to prove us wrong just by knowing something we do not, or by having a different opinion? Why people have such big egos, and are always on the defensive side, taking everything as personal attacks?

Then, there are these rare jewels who respect logic, honesty, and doing the right thing. They are open to learning experiences and you learn a lot from them too. If you are lucky enough to have such people in your life, do not let go of them. I have a few, and chances are if you cannot get rid of me, you are one of those people. I thank you for giving hope to humanity!

اشتباه گرفتید!

در خانه عموی خدا بیامرز من، خانم اسپانیشی کار میکرد. یک بار تلفن رو گویا جواب داده بوده، و کسی‌ سراغ علی‌ که عموی من بوده باشه رو گرفته بوده. این خانم هم گفته بوده که شما شماره رو اشتباه گرفتید و اینجا چنین کسی‌ نداریم. بعد خانم عموی من که متوجه می‌شه، میگه چرا نداریم، خوب با شوهر من کار داشتند. این خانم اسپانیش هم میگه، نه اسم شوهر تو که علی‌ نیست، هیچ وقت به این اسم صداش نمیکنی‌. مگه اسمش "میگما" نیست؟ بله، از آنجایی که خانم عموی من همیشه با یک "میگما آا‌"ی کش دار شروع به حرف زدن با عموی من میکرد، اسم عموی من در ذهن این خانم اسپانیش، "میگما" بوده!

Our One and Only Earth!

Last winter:
Three back to back record breaking blizzards over the past hundred years.
Heating shelters for those without heaters across the cities.
Roof collapses.
Power outages.
Fallen trees.
Over a week of closed businesses and schools.
Millions of dollars of budget deficit for states because of snow removals.
Stuck ambulances, fire trucks, power repair personnel.

This summer, before the first month is over:
Three consecutive days of record breaking temperatures above 100 degrees.
Two consecutive water main breaks in the same city.
Amtrak slowing down the trains for fear of the rails reaching dangerously high temperatures that can affect the performance of the trains.
Cooling centers across the cities for people without air conditioning.

No, nothing is happening to our Earth.
There is no global warming,
No climate change,
Everything is safe and sound.
No need to recycle, conserve energy, turn off the extra lights,
In fact, we even afford to spill some oil over the ocean,
Maybe we manage to interrupt the ocean's natural current,
We will either freeze Europe,
Or raise the ocean's temperature here,
And have ourselves many more hurricanes.
Would not that be cool?

No worries, we are all safe and sound,
I just do not know what kind of Earth we will have,
Not for the next generations,
But for myself,
In the next year, and the one following that, and the next!