The 1st Annual NASA Basketball Championship

The NBA is only 30 days away! But if you're antsy for some fast paced basketball action, come to NASA!

Our company had a BBQ on Thursday at NASA Goddard Rec Center. Let me preface this place for you:

1) It looks like the place where NASA buried the dead astronauts that were lost in freak accidents back in the 60's.
2) There's a creepy shed in the back that has caution tape strewn all over it.
3) The basketball court probably looks like it belonged in Silent Hill than a government compound.

Granted, it was much less creepy in the amazingly nice weather we had on Thursday. Company picnics are a time were people that normally see each other gather and fraternize. Sometimes, there are team building activities. This was not that time.

This time, some decided it was a good idea to bring a basketball to play on the court with grass growing out of it. Oh yeah... it's as epic as you can imagine NASA basketball to be. Here was the starting line up:

Center: Ponytail guy, late 20's early 30's, wearing black shirt and pants with a red skinny tie.

Forward: Indian dude that seems confused as to why we're not throwing the ball at a wicket. And why there's no paddle involved...

Forward: Your stereotypical corporate guy. Regular fit (read: baggy) purple dress shirt, shelves rolled up, black slacks, and sport sunglasses

Guard: Checkered shirt tucked into jeans guy with a goatee

Guard: Guy with cargo pants

There was also a guy who just stood under the basket to retrieve the "shots".

So the game starts with our goatee'ed guard shooting the ball from what I will loosely call the three point line. And what happens?? On the VERY FIRST SHOT...VERY FIRST! The ball gets wedged between the hoop and the backboard. Yup... it's like some bad 80's movie about nerds was coming true.

You might ask, "How did they get it down?" First, you shouldn't ask that questions, it will only lead to disappointment. Second, you'd think with all this brain power and corporate know-how in once place this wouldn't be much of a story... Yeah...well...what had happened was...

The two forwards stand still in a defensive stance as to box out anyone that may want to get the "rebound" from this shot, while the ball CLEARLY IS NOT MOVING. Our other non-goatee'ed all star thinks that it is a good idea to throw his shoe at the ball. His shoe gets stuck.

His shoe gets stuck.

With the ball.

That that sink in for just a bit....

Our all-pro team center, then, has the BRILLIANT idea to get a chair. To do what? Stand on it and jump off, trying to knock the ball lose. This made White Man Can't Jump look like a highlight reel of Michael Jordan's greatest jams. The guy BARELY got 8 inches off the chair.

They can send a satellite 1.5 million miles from earth, but getting yourself more than 8 inches off the ground...impossible.

At this moment are corporate guy is standing there in his corporate super hero stance, with his hands on his hips all alpha like and is looking at the ball, giving the all so corporately ubiquitous "looks like we got a problem here, team" look. If you don't know what that looks like, go to a regional manager of ANY company and present him/her with a problem. They all give the same goddamn look, and then proceed to do nothing.

At this point, I'm done eating and really REALLY can't handle this type of fast paced excitement, especially after lunch. As we leave, our skinny tied center finally got the brilliant idea of poking the ball AND the shoe out with the chair that he was using as a launch pad. YAY!!! Order restored!

Now we can all go back and shoot air balls so the only person that gets any exercise out of this is the guy standing under the basket. He is my game, year, and finals MVP.

DON'T EVEN BREATH ON IT!

I am the guy that, at almost every meeting, takes frantic notes. Not really because I per se care about what the person is talking about, but because I write down things I need to Google later. This is week 3, and I'm finally out of the "jaw dropping" phase, but have entered the "actually doing work" phase. For the past little bit, I've been reading up on vacuum physics and Googling things like "quartz crystal microbalance", but now it's time to do work.

One of the things I'm doing is a satellite that will be shooting lasers at the north pole to see ice thickness. Most of it is being built in the "why humans suck" building. I recommend this building to anyone that denies climate change or that humans are behind it. It gives you many MANY images of earth over time and the decrease in arctic ice, deforestation, desertification, and explosions in human pollution, CO2 and other emissions. If you ever want to a) depress yourself or b) get motivated to recycle, I recommend this building. 

The other thing I'm doing looks like something out of Star Wars. It's large. Tennis court sized large. I'm working with a team of people that will be in charge of making sure instruments are clean and free from contamination. This is much harder than one would think. Especially when you're assigned to an instrument that's so high tech, I'm pretty sure it's the only one in the world. 

The idea is awesome, I'll spare you the details, but it's basically hundreds of micron sized shutter that can capture light at a whole bunch of wavelengths. The problem with this is the shutters. They are small... couple hundred microns small. So, while I'm working to take samples off the cover and shit, the guy in charge of assembly gives me the background. Apparently, the damn thing is so sensitive, that if you tighten the screws in from the wrong side, you'll mess it up. So, if you go in on it's left side, instead of the right, IT'S FUCKED! The best though, THE BEST thing about this amazing piece of equipment is you can't breath on it. If you come close, hold your breathe. I feel like if I stare at this thing too long it'll just destroy itself. The project lead on this has a long pony tail that he start growing when this project started, 8 years ago... I am convinced that this is his version of the Fidel Castro beard... it's like he won't cut it until this thing goes into space VIVA LA REVOLUCIóN!!

So, you're not supposed to breath on it...check. I can do that... except for today when I was inspecting the compartment this instrument was supposed to go in, I almost ram a UV flashlight right through it. Yay...new guy...

Good thing I didn't... good thing it still works

My coffee break involves watching a rocket launch

Today, there was a rocket launched at Goddard's site on the eastern shore of VA, at Wallops Island. The launch was between 10:30 and 11:15, the "launch window". We had a meeting until 10:15 and right after people just started going onto the roof top. I remember hearing on the radio that Orbital Space Science was launching today and will be the 2nd private company, first being SpaceX, to send a rocket into space to dock with the International Space Station.

In about 10 minutes of the launch, every roof top at Goddard had people standing on it and people outside watching 2 small puff of smoke go up in the eastern sky. People were streaming the launch countdown on their phone and giving live commentary...yeah NASA. It all ended in about 10 minutes, which is really crazy considering we can send something into space in less than 10 minutes.

So today's coffee break...rocket launch.

I've stated noticing that at NASA there's a couple of trends. Here are some:

1) Ponytails are a thing. The number of people with ponytails...is surprising.
2) Hawaiian shirt Friday? It's a thing at NASA...for realz
3) We love stickers and signs. THEY ARE EVERYWHERE! You will never forget where you work or what project your on.
4) We have an ultimate team...go figure
5) I work with a guy that I would nickname Jebadiah  or Ezequiel. The weird thing is... he has the start of a beard, but it's more like a really thick chin strap, without a mustache. It's kinda weird. Also, he walks around all day with a visor. It's like the Amish Bro...without the mustache.
6) People love to accessorize their cars with NASA stuff, it's kinda crazy. This makes sense, since working at NASA is pretty awesome. The funny thing is...one car... a blacked out Escalade, had at least 5 mission stickers and then this:

     Yeah... there's a NASA engineer or scientist that <3's sushi....

I love my job.

Well... I ended up at NASA

In the last 2 months, I went from giving monkeys cocaine, getting them off of it once addicted, and introducing a challenge article to get them off the addiction to helping build this. Needless to say, this has been a little daunting. I feel like the "I don't know what I'm doing" dog. In stereotypical NASA style, the office across from me sits John Mather, the Nobel Physics Prize winner. Yeah, so there's that. Everyone else is just an astrophysicist, rocket scientist, or aerospace engineer. Me? Yeah... I gave monkeys cocaine to see what it will do to them.

It's still amazingly mind boggling to drive into work everyday and see this:

I feel like the star struck kid walking through the halls reading everything and asking the dumb questions. It pretty amazing the stuff NASA has in there. Also, it's fairly amazing that some of the computers are from like 2000.

The building I work in is a freaking maze. A maze that has multi-billion dollar things that go into space and I'm DEATHLY afraid of just walking into somewhere I'm not supposed to or knock over some major hardware component.

It's interesting that the people there are really cool. You would think that NASA was filled with pocket protecting wearing nerds that could hold a conversation. One the contrary, it may be 1) The most diverse place I've worked at 2) HANDS DOWN the smartest place 3) Filled with characters that all have their individual quirks. As the guy I was touring with today said: "The great thing about this place is you'll never have to work with anyone stupider [sic] than you, but then most people are smarter than you." Yup.. that's about right.

Hopefully, I impress somebody to let me stay after this first 6 months and I never have to go back to giving monkeys cocaine or AIDS... but until then, I'll just have to work hard and hide the fact that I really feel like this: