Rocket scientist sighting!

Hi Kids! 

Well, the big storm system that brought you all the new snow swung a little too far south last night for us to sail today.  This morning the wind was just a howling down here and we decided to lay low another day and sail south tomorrow.  The wind is predicted to continue coming from the north for the rest of the week so we have time to wait.

I checked the NASA rocket launch schedule on a whim to see if they still intended to try to launch the rocket they had planned for this morning.  It was 10:13 when I checked it.  The launch was scheduled for 10:26 and the schedule said it was still on.  So I said to Angel jen, "You want to go watch this rocket blast off?"

She said, "We ain't got nothing else to do!" (She likes to talk like that to make fun of my lousy English.  She's a card, she is.)

So we hustled up, dug her folding bike out of the shower stall where we keep it, dragged it up on the dock, unfolded it and pitched my bike over the rail onto the dock and we were off.  We bicycled the mile and a half down to the launch watching place and made it in plenty of time.  I was trying to take it easy on Angel Jen because she isn't much of a cyclist but she was having none of it.  "I'm Right behind you!' she yelled."Pick it up a little!"

So I pedaled faster.

When we got down there there was another couple there.  The launch got 'scrubbed' (which is rocket talk for 'postponed') after waiting an hour past the scheduled launch time.  We got talking to the other people and it turns out he is a retired rocket scientist!  A real live, honest to god, rocket scientist.  He wrote the computer software protocols for the communication of the Apollo space craft between the capsule and earth.  As you little historians know, the Apollo project is the NASA name for the rockets that went to the moon in the sixties and seventies, back when your teacher was a youngster.  Which was a loooong time ago.

They were really nice people so we invited them back to the boat for coffee.  We talked for a while and I asked him where he was when the rocket to the moon took off.  He said he was in 'the firing room'.  That's the room with all the control panels that we all saw on TV, the room with all the engineers who controlled the rocket.  He told us he had discovered a mistake in the software about ten minutes before the launch and was in hot discussions with his boss, the boss's boss, and the boss above him about how to fix it.  He got their permission to 'patch' the software and made it so the launch could happen.  Woof!

He worked for NASA for a long time then retired.  Now he comes out to the bridge to watch the launches with the rest of us.  It sure was interesting sitting down with a real live rocket scientist. 

He said when he goes sailing on boats with his friends he gets to be the navigator, figuring out where the boat is and how to get to where it's going because the guys tell him,"You're the rocket scientist.  You figure it out."  And he does.  It's good to be a rocket scientist.

So study hard, little buddies.  Maybe some day you can launch a rocket.  Or at least learn to navigate.