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!!
