Perspective

After every Shuttle mission and ISS crew return, there is an awards event at the JSC visitors center.  The crew attends and presents team and individual awards to some of the flight control and engineering team members that helped make the mission possible.  After the awards they show a slide show and talk about the mission.  I’ve been to a handful of these ceremonies over the years and received a couple of team awards.

Monday was the award ceremony for STS-134.  I was named on a team award for the STORRM (Sensor Test for Orion Relnav Risk Mitigation – one of the more unwieldly acronyms I’ve encountered) trajectory team.  Some members of the VVO team, which I manage, were named on a group award for the planning of the Soyuz undock and stationkeeping that got the pictures of the Shuttle docked to the Station.  So I had arranged a babysitter for the night so that Gavin could come to the ceremony with me.

Gavin happened to mention the ceremony to his parents, who had drivven down with a family friend to get NASA tours earlier in the day.  They decided to stay for the ceremony since they are open to the public.

The ceremony was really good – the crew did a great job.  But, the lady from Wyoming we had with us was blown away by the whole thing.  She kept saying how over the moon she was to be there and how she couldn’t believe those were real astronauts talking.  She took a picture of pretty much every slide in the slide show.

It’s good to be reminded sometimes of how cool these things I do every day in my work are.  I think everyone gets used to the things they are exposed to all the time, even when those things are pretty much some of the coolest things in the world.  The perspective I get by giving people tours of my workplace is worth every minute I spend doing it.  The ability to make someone’s day by getting them into the room they see on TV during Shuttle missions is priceless.