Astronauts and Aerial Artists

Tonight I experienced one of the most incredible mixes of science and art. At an event hosted by the Seattle Science Center, part of their Science Luminaries Series, I experienced one of the most incredible evenings of art and science.

The evening was hosted by the Museum of Flight, in their new Space space - where the shuttle trainer will be arriving next weekend in the Supper Guppy!!! - which is an incredible building. I loved the giant images of the Milky Way and other beautiful parts of space spread across the walls in giant mural form.

First to speak was Pinky Nelson, who was an astronaut, is an astronomer, and works at WWU. He began with a compelling story about his flights on the shuttle and how he was one of 6 (I think that was the number) astronauts to fly solo in an untethered chair outside the ISS. First off - flying untethered would terrify me. Secondly, his mission was to catch a satellite IN THE MIDDLE OF SPACE. And guess what? An engineer made a mistake and gave a measurement for a vital pin as 1" longer than the actual. Thus he could not grab the satellite with the grapple he had and eventually tried gripping with with his hand via the solar panel - scary idea, as the edges could have cut through his gloves and he'd be dead faster than fast :/ I found some of the footage he showed us - I got chills watching it - click here to start at the appropriate spot. Also, he loves the Hubble. Which makes him close to my favorite astronaut, however I met one that worked on the last Hubble servicing mission, and so Pinky can't rate quite as high :)

I still want to get one of the Hubble Huggers patches...

They integrated the art really well into the program, as next came a couple from the Seattle Opera, performing a piece from Rachel Portman's The Little Prince, based off the book by the same title (which, incidentally, I own in French and English. Children's books are great for learning new languages!) Though there were no costumes and the scene was just verbally set for us and then the excerpts were sung, it was still powerful. My favorite line came when the pilot was describing his emotions when flying: I hold the stars in the palm of my hand. It was just captivating. Here is a clip with more than what we heard, the part that was performed is just the very beginning of the clip, before the pilot is asked to draw a sheep:

Then Dr. Bonnie Dunbar shared her story, which is eerily similar to mine: hailing from a small ranch in south east Washington (in the same area code as my grandparents!), she actually did her undergrad and PhD in my department at the UW - Materials Science and Engineering. I knew this about her, as we have lots of pictures from her and of her and of the space shuttle, all signed by her, hanging in our conference room. We even have a teeny tiny WA state flag flown with her on one of her missions. Granted, though our backgrounds are similar, our futures are likely vastly different. I'm not entirely sure I'd want to be an astronaut. I did run up and shake her hand during the intermission, as well as get a slightly awkward photo with her, but it's so hard to know what to say when you meet someone in an event like this. I really wanted to ask her about her experiences as a woman in the sciences, if she has any family of her own, etc, but I wanted to respect her time and the others waiting to shake her hand. It was really important to me that the little girl behind me meet her and hopefully be a bit more inspired to pursue a STEM career. I may still email her at her Boeing address and maybe I'll get a response, but in the meantime, please enjoy the awkward levels of this picture:

You can't really tell from this pic, but I'm definitely rocking both my NASA meatball and Zero-G pins on the lapel. I'm probably breaking some rule about wearing too many pins, but I love them both so much! 

Post-intermission, the event transitioned into private space access, appropriate, seeing as WA has a number of companies working towards creating vehicles to ferry passengers to low earth orbit and beyond. Chris Lewicki, of Planetary Resources, gave a brief introduction to asteroids and why his company wants to try to access one - I mainly understood that there are SO MANY asteroids!!!

The next section was incredible - there's apparently an aerial arts school in West Seattle (where a person moves around high above the ground utilizing two strips of silk fabric), and they had a few performers come out and perform two pieces, Weightlessness and Space. The first piece featured a woman dressed in a bodysuit, painted in a way that reminded me a 'warrior princesses'. While her piece and ability was amazing to watch, it seemed kind of flashy, as she would grin at the audience and kind of 'show off' in a way. The second artist, however, was leagues more enaging. Not only was she dressed in a highly stylized, faux-astronaut suit, she wore a white helmet to complete the look, and her movements really evoked the idea of space. While her piece had just as many amazing moves as the first one, she really slowed down her movements, remaining still in a position for a number of seconds and included shapes that reminded me of someone gazing with wonder at the universe or crammed in a small exploration capsule. She also didn't show off as much, but was very much into creating this idea that she was in space, looking across the vast black spaces and exploring the area around her. It was a phenomenal combination of strength, grace, and trust in a piece of silk. (Materials note: I think that silk is considered the strongest natural fiber, as it is the only natural fiber that is in filament form, which means the long strands can be aligned to increase the material's strength.)

Beautiful. 

I also couldn't help but be a bit envious of their upper body strength. I'm working on strengthening my arm and back muscles through rock climbing, but I still can't do a single pull-up :/

The evening ended with Mark Sirangleo, of Sierra Nevada Space Systems, talking about some of the cool NASA missions his company has contracted for, including the Mars Science Laboratory, and about the new crew vehicle they are developing based on some old Russian/NASA designs - it looks pretty sweet! He was showing an animation about the MSL's landing and frankly, I'm terrified. It just doesn't look like it's supposed to work and apparently they haven't tested all the parts together because it was too big!!! While trying to find the video he showed, I stumbled upon this terrifying video: 

I know I'll watch the landing live if I'm awake, but gah! I hope it works!!

And that was it! 2 hours of some of most inspiring space, science, and art I've seen a long while. I wish whoever is reading this could have experienced this event. I was simply blown away with the evening and I really hope the Science Center continues to increase access to the sciences for adults, not just kids. I would love, love, love to see something like the Cal Acadamy's Nightlife at the science center, even if only once a month!

Hej!

Hej! Tack! Hej dä!
Hello! Thanks! Goodbye!


This past Monday, I began taking Swedish language classes. The above is about all I learned - and I even had to look up goodbye in my text... Why take Swedish? Because I'm hopefully traveling there next summer (or maybe the summer after that) to work with a collaborator! There is a professor at KTH, the technical university in Stockholm, who is developing a system that I want to use and/or replicate. Well, and going to Sweden is cool and my advisor believes that each student should spend some time abroad, learning to work with scientists on a global level :)

KTH in the summer sunshine

Anyways, I'm sure that the students and professors at KTH will speak English with me, however I firmly believe that I'll get more out of my experience in a foreign country if I can understand some of the language. I didn't really want to take a course at my university, partially because it meets every day at 9:30am for an hour, but also because I don't need to take it at the university level to achieve my goals. Fortunately for me, Seattle has a large scandinavian population and we have a great Swedish Cultural Center! I found out that they offer inexpensive, low-key classes that meet one evening a week. Perfect for me and I'll be able to continue to take courses throughout the school year, hopefully gaining some basic conversational skills. So far the pronunciation hasn't been too tricky, but I've never tried a germanic language before (I've tried learning Spanish and French previously) so I know things will come up that I'll find difficult. The most interesting thing I learned in day one was that there are no verb endings! All verbs stay the same, regardless of case, and are differentiated by the pronouns that precede them. Which is only a bummer because when learning other languages, verb conjugations are my strongest point in the whole course, thanks to my Latin background - where all we basically did for 1.5 years was conjugate verbs! 

Isn't Stockholm colorful?! 

I'm also excited that Stockholm is a port city with many ferries to outlying islands. That's one thing I love about living in Seattle - the easy access to water and islands in the sound, San Juans, and Canada. I'm keeping my fingers tightly crossed that it all works out for me to travel to Sweden for the whole summer, goodness knows I will also check out as much of the rest of Europe as I can!

leading females.

books. Oh, how I love them. Though I've read few 'for fun' books in the past 5 years than ever before, I still love to read - I'm currently working through The Most Human Human, testing out my new Kindle :) Recently, when I was back at my parents home, I was searching through the bookcases and experienced a small 'aha!' moment - while I know my independent and feminist tendencies today are partially a product of being a first born and my awesome roommate, I realized that the majority of books I picked up during some pretty formative years all featured strong female protagonists, doing all sorts of fun things.

All my boxcar children books. Not pictured: all the ones I borrowed from the library! Love the independence and fun times had by all the Alden siblings.

With the number of historical fiction / biographies I read, it's surprising I didn't love history more. I certainly didn't read any books about chemists :/

 I had two big loves growing up: horses and ballet. Granted, there are not many books about young ballerinas, so my shelf has many many more books about horses, usually featuring a girl. And while some people may think ballet is super girly and wondering why it's listed here, I remember Drina as being a very strong and independent young woman who worked hard at her craft.

I didn't seem to enjoy many books with leading male characters, probably because I didn't identify with them as much as a female lead - just going to show me, once again, how powerful the young adult literature genre can be.

Oh, and American Girl dolls / stories - love, love, love them. So accessible for young girls and subtly taught so many good life skills. Plus, my first foray into designing clothing was for my doll, Molly. Oh, and my cat, but she wasn't as great about posing as Molly.....

Other favorites included pretty much any book by Tamara Pierce and many of Anne McCaffrey's books about the dragons of Pern:

to read: Sophie's World, Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Space Trilogy, The Evolution of Adam, and sooo many others!

to finish: The Most Human Human, The Design of Everyday Things (had to go back to the library :/), The Problem of Pain, Hood, Apollo's Angels, and sooo many others!

Clearly, I'm not just reading books with female protagonists now :) but I am glad I'm finally finding some non-fiction to enjoy. Generally I find non-fic kind of boring, but that's because I grew up on fantasy fiction....

Also, does anyone have good sources to borrow ebooks? I have four different library cards but can always used more resources :)

suits not required?

Last December, I blogged a response to quote I had read from Zooey Deschanel, concerning wearing girly things to work versus being taken seriously in the workplace. This response was pretty much just based on my own experience and perception of how I was received in the very male-dominated scientific community.

An article I read earlier this week entitled "Forget the Glass Ceiling, We Have Hemlines to Consider" was very intriguing. Apparently, it has been shown that as a job applicant, females are more well recieved if they dress in a more feminine manner, more along these lines:

rather than something like this: 

which is all just so interesting to me. I just bought my first skirt suit last year, partially because I thought it was the best blend between my love of dresses and the current male-like 'requirements' in my industry. Now I have to ask myself - maybe I'm just playing into the whole stereotype unintentionally? The article does bring up a question - how can we get this female judgement trend to stop? What will it take for men to seriously consider any female candidate, regardless of what she comes in wearing? My qualifications should get me the job, regardless of whether I am in pants and flats or heels and a skirt! I don't see how change can effectively occur if women have to play into the stereotype to get a job, which just reinforces the bias, and the cycle never ends. It is such a tricky line right now for women to walk along. In some ways, this reminds me of what I've read about bloomers coming into fashion for women, but not so extreme. This is just subtle gender biasing that should not occur. I just want to wear something that I feel comfortable in, flatters my body type, expresses my personality, and does not cater to the men in my industry who think women should be weaker and less dominant. Is that too much to ask for? 

Maybe you're reading this and think it is silly that I think so much about what I wear, but it is precisely because I, as a female, am so quickly judged based on my appearance (and interacted with accordingly), that I have to think carefully about the way I dress. Cyclic, ain't it?

women, tech and commercials (kind of part 2)

You probably don't remember, but earlier this year, I blogged a bit about the surprising backlash against a Best Buy commercial that only featured male tech leaders in the phone/app industry. I still don't have a huge issue with the commercial, but somebody in Best Buy's marketing department must have heard because just recently this new commercial started airing:

Thanks Best Buy for not only featuring women, but diverse women in science and technology! Plus, the commercial is doubly awesome because the first woman featured is my fantastic friend and fellow microgravity flyer, Meredith Perry! So great!

23 and a week.

time has certainly flown. how did I go from this:

to this: 

so quickly?

while I'm not in denial about being 23, it is slightly surreal. the 20's were always for people older than me, people more mature me than me, people somewhere between me and my parents. I think it might be a weird age for me because I never knew 20-somethings at any point growing up until I arrived here. People in their twenties populate TV shows, but the lives they portray are only distantly similar to mine. I doubt that a Jesus-seeking, science PhD student who lives with 5 great female roommates, spends most of her time at school with perpetual goggle lines, and rarely goes out anywhere for 'fun' would make sellable television...and one of my life goals is to live with as little drama as possible. sometimes, it's incredible to me that I already went to college - weirdly, I never remember a time when I was like "I am going to college and then am going to get a job" (well, the job part won't happen for a number of years still....) but I also don't remember a time when college seemed like a large obstacle - I just started applying to schools when people told me to. the future is ever-present and sometimes I think that I look to much into the future and forget to just 'live' everyday life, if that makes any sense at all. and maybe that's why 23 is a bit surreal - the future is here, now. what does year 23 have in store? I'm excited to find out :)

also, sometimes I enjoy not starting sentences with capitals. the shape of the sentence is different. that's all.

oh, and I received a kindle for my birthday from my parents - probably should have waited until post-finals weeks to open that gift...