NASA "Furious" with Artemis I Engineer - Day 2
So NASAs pissed.
When I’d imagined their response, I pictured them having meetings about how exactly to communicate with me while in space. I imagined them treating me like they would an inexperienced astronaut: friendly, helpful, needing guidance. Hell, I kind of figured they’d quickly see the bright side and put me to work on whatever work they could think up. Of course, that would change the second I splashed down, but up in space it would be all ‘gosh-darn-it what’s done is done, so let’s work together.’
It kind of started out that way. They had a lot of questions to make sure I hadn’t done anything to mess up the mission or break something aboard. Yes, I weighed Moonikin and made sure I wasn’t so much as an ounce over-weight. No, I hadn’t touched anything aboard the ship. No, I wasn’t on here by accident, this wasn’t some terrible case of ground crew catching a nap at the wrong moment (something they probably thought was several orders of magnitude more likely than what’s actually happening).
That lasted about an hour. But once the engineers had asked every question they could think to ask, the yelling started.
Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, the flight director, and my boss’s, boss’s, boss, didn’t exactly yell. You know when you’re having a fight with your girlfriend and she’s not yelling, but she’s annunciating each word like an ice pick being thrust at you? Charlie was doing that.
She also fired me. Technically I’m supposed to get a warning letter which invites me to a performance review meeting, where I’m “coached” to bring my performance up, and when that doesn’t work, I get a final warning and meeting with my supervisor to talk over the issues, then they can fire me.
Charlie made an exception for me. I’m exceptional.
It was actually a lot like getting yelled at by your mother. She was angry, but the focus wasn’t on her emotion, it was on how much I’d let everyone down. Thrown away a great career, bright future, you probably don’t need me to conjure up memories of what a disappointed mother sounds like.
The deputy director of NASA did yell. He is working himself up to an aneurysm. I didn’t want to say anything at the time, but he needs a yoga retreat, or to switch to decaf, or something. I’d describe him as nearly incoherent with rage. I guess the higher you get up the ladder the less you have to hold yourself back.
Then the director of NASA began his call with, “son, you better be praying you make it back alive so we can throw you in jail.” So, yay!
The real surprise though was that I got a call from the Vice-President of the United States of America. She yelled at me. Vice-President Harris seems like such a nice person on television, but wow, when she gets going…
“I guess that means you don’t want another donation from me for your next campaign?” Honestly, I was trying to be funny. It seemed like a good thing to say at the time. She did not take it well. Apparently, the entire apparatus of the US government was going to be turned to the question of how they could screw me over once I was back, and screw me over they would.
Still, I’d like to focus on the positives: I got a call from the Vice-President of the United States of America. Maybe one day I’d do something bad enough to get a call from the President!
Was it worth it? I’m the first human being to leave Earth’s orbit solo. I’m the first human to stow away on a spaceship. I’m the first human to fly in an Orion capsule, or atop the SLS rocket system. I’m the first felon in space. I’ll be the first person to both be in space, and in prison (though I’ve been beaten to jail - darn).
Being an astronaut is the first thing I remember wanting - if you exclude a Nintendo. I spent four years getting a degree in aerospace engineering, and three years working at NASA trying to get into the astronaut program. If I’d been selected, I would have gone through another three or four years of training before being selected for a mission, and then another year or two of specialized training for that. Total investment: 12 years. I’m sure, with good behavior, I’ll be out of prison in 12 years. I mean, I don’t know every single little law I might have broken. But I’m a first time offender and this was a non-violent crime, how long could it really be?
Besides, if you’re willing to risk being blown to hell on a rocket just to get into space, doesn’t it stand to reason you’d gladly accept some prison time if you make it back safely?
I’d really rather not be thinking about being stuck in a tiny cell for years. So instead, I decide to focus on the tiny room I’m stuck in for the next month.
This is one of those good news, bad news, scenarios.
The good news is that I do have all of the necessities. There is a toilet (though honestly it looks more like a sleep apnea machine built into the wall), and I’d made the mistake of waiting until I needed to use it before trying to figure out how to use it.
Even though this was supposed to be a test mission, the ship has oxygen and water like it would for a real mission. So again, that’s good news.
Bad news time. On a manned mission there would have been a couple of hundred pounds of vacuum sealed meals in the galley. Pre-launch I hadn’t been able to figure out whether they were actually stocking it for the test, and when I opened the hatches for food storage all I found were large plastic cubes labeled “ballast test weight: 1 kg”.
That’s ok. I had crammed as many Skor bars into my flight suit as I had weight allotment for. It works out to 500 calories a day, and if I’m just floating around taking things easy that should be about a 500 calorie a day deficit which works out to 6 pounds of lost fat over the mission. Some people pay good money for that kind of diet.
And yes, butter is a more calorie dense food. But when I closed my eyes and imagined eating scoop after scoop of butter for weeks on end (and it starting to go off by the end of the mission), I’d rather have the chocolate bars and lose a little weight.
I spend some time floating around Orion, exploring. In the compartment where there were supposed to be space suits there was just a note “I owe you 1 spacesuit - NASA”. Kidding. There was a test weight. No spacesuit though.
I’ve got to say, floating there, looking at that stupid test weight where a space suit should have been, I started to wonder what other important stuff Orion was missing.
Looking around was a lot like exploring an empty hotel room. Empty drawer after empty drawer. I was really starting to expect to find a bible at some point. And then I did. The Emergency Procedures Manual. The thing is as thick as two phone books with just as many pages. I flipped it open, pretty much gibberish as far as I could tell, and stowed it. Here’s hoping I don’t need it.
Aside from that, I’d loaded up a thumb drive with two hundred science fiction books. Speaking of which, I think it’s finally time I give Ender’s Game a chance.
What are the odds the entire government’s going to be after me when I get back?
***
I’m Nathan H. Green, a science-fiction writer with a degree in aerospace engineering, and I’m going to be doing daily semi-fictional stories tracking the Artemis I mission.
You can follow along through my instagram (@authornathanhgreen), my reddit (u/authornathanhgreen), sign up on my website to be part of my daily mailing list (www.authornathanhgreen.com).
Artemis I Has A Stowaway is a work of semi-fiction. All incidents, events, dialogue and sentiments (which are not part of the mission’s official history), are entirely fictional. Where real historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, sentiments, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events, personality, disposition, or attitudes of the real person, nor to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. Save the above, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
© 2022 Nathan H. Green
When I’d imagined their response, I pictured them having meetings about how exactly to communicate with me while in space. I imagined them treating me like they would an inexperienced astronaut: friendly, helpful, needing guidance. Hell, I kind of figured they’d quickly see the bright side and put me to work on whatever work they could think up. Of course, that would change the second I splashed down, but up in space it would be all ‘gosh-darn-it what’s done is done, so let’s work together.’
It kind of started out that way. They had a lot of questions to make sure I hadn’t done anything to mess up the mission or break something aboard. Yes, I weighed Moonikin and made sure I wasn’t so much as an ounce over-weight. No, I hadn’t touched anything aboard the ship. No, I wasn’t on here by accident, this wasn’t some terrible case of ground crew catching a nap at the wrong moment (something they probably thought was several orders of magnitude more likely than what’s actually happening).
That lasted about an hour. But once the engineers had asked every question they could think to ask, the yelling started.
Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, the flight director, and my boss’s, boss’s, boss, didn’t exactly yell. You know when you’re having a fight with your girlfriend and she’s not yelling, but she’s annunciating each word like an ice pick being thrust at you? Charlie was doing that.
She also fired me. Technically I’m supposed to get a warning letter which invites me to a performance review meeting, where I’m “coached” to bring my performance up, and when that doesn’t work, I get a final warning and meeting with my supervisor to talk over the issues, then they can fire me.
Charlie made an exception for me. I’m exceptional.
It was actually a lot like getting yelled at by your mother. She was angry, but the focus wasn’t on her emotion, it was on how much I’d let everyone down. Thrown away a great career, bright future, you probably don’t need me to conjure up memories of what a disappointed mother sounds like.
The deputy director of NASA did yell. He is working himself up to an aneurysm. I didn’t want to say anything at the time, but he needs a yoga retreat, or to switch to decaf, or something. I’d describe him as nearly incoherent with rage. I guess the higher you get up the ladder the less you have to hold yourself back.
Then the director of NASA began his call with, “son, you better be praying you make it back alive so we can throw you in jail.” So, yay!
The real surprise though was that I got a call from the Vice-President of the United States of America. She yelled at me. Vice-President Harris seems like such a nice person on television, but wow, when she gets going…
“I guess that means you don’t want another donation from me for your next campaign?” Honestly, I was trying to be funny. It seemed like a good thing to say at the time. She did not take it well. Apparently, the entire apparatus of the US government was going to be turned to the question of how they could screw me over once I was back, and screw me over they would.
Still, I’d like to focus on the positives: I got a call from the Vice-President of the United States of America. Maybe one day I’d do something bad enough to get a call from the President!
Was it worth it? I’m the first human being to leave Earth’s orbit solo. I’m the first human to stow away on a spaceship. I’m the first human to fly in an Orion capsule, or atop the SLS rocket system. I’m the first felon in space. I’ll be the first person to both be in space, and in prison (though I’ve been beaten to jail - darn).
Being an astronaut is the first thing I remember wanting - if you exclude a Nintendo. I spent four years getting a degree in aerospace engineering, and three years working at NASA trying to get into the astronaut program. If I’d been selected, I would have gone through another three or four years of training before being selected for a mission, and then another year or two of specialized training for that. Total investment: 12 years. I’m sure, with good behavior, I’ll be out of prison in 12 years. I mean, I don’t know every single little law I might have broken. But I’m a first time offender and this was a non-violent crime, how long could it really be?
Besides, if you’re willing to risk being blown to hell on a rocket just to get into space, doesn’t it stand to reason you’d gladly accept some prison time if you make it back safely?
I’d really rather not be thinking about being stuck in a tiny cell for years. So instead, I decide to focus on the tiny room I’m stuck in for the next month.
This is one of those good news, bad news, scenarios.
The good news is that I do have all of the necessities. There is a toilet (though honestly it looks more like a sleep apnea machine built into the wall), and I’d made the mistake of waiting until I needed to use it before trying to figure out how to use it.
Even though this was supposed to be a test mission, the ship has oxygen and water like it would for a real mission. So again, that’s good news.
Bad news time. On a manned mission there would have been a couple of hundred pounds of vacuum sealed meals in the galley. Pre-launch I hadn’t been able to figure out whether they were actually stocking it for the test, and when I opened the hatches for food storage all I found were large plastic cubes labeled “ballast test weight: 1 kg”.
That’s ok. I had crammed as many Skor bars into my flight suit as I had weight allotment for. It works out to 500 calories a day, and if I’m just floating around taking things easy that should be about a 500 calorie a day deficit which works out to 6 pounds of lost fat over the mission. Some people pay good money for that kind of diet.
And yes, butter is a more calorie dense food. But when I closed my eyes and imagined eating scoop after scoop of butter for weeks on end (and it starting to go off by the end of the mission), I’d rather have the chocolate bars and lose a little weight.
I spend some time floating around Orion, exploring. In the compartment where there were supposed to be space suits there was just a note “I owe you 1 spacesuit - NASA”. Kidding. There was a test weight. No spacesuit though.
I’ve got to say, floating there, looking at that stupid test weight where a space suit should have been, I started to wonder what other important stuff Orion was missing.
Looking around was a lot like exploring an empty hotel room. Empty drawer after empty drawer. I was really starting to expect to find a bible at some point. And then I did. The Emergency Procedures Manual. The thing is as thick as two phone books with just as many pages. I flipped it open, pretty much gibberish as far as I could tell, and stowed it. Here’s hoping I don’t need it.
Aside from that, I’d loaded up a thumb drive with two hundred science fiction books. Speaking of which, I think it’s finally time I give Ender’s Game a chance.
What are the odds the entire government’s going to be after me when I get back?
***
I’m Nathan H. Green, a science-fiction writer with a degree in aerospace engineering, and I’m going to be doing daily semi-fictional stories tracking the Artemis I mission.
You can follow along through my instagram (@authornathanhgreen), my reddit (u/authornathanhgreen), sign up on my website to be part of my daily mailing list (www.authornathanhgreen.com).
Artemis I Has A Stowaway is a work of semi-fiction. All incidents, events, dialogue and sentiments (which are not part of the mission’s official history), are entirely fictional. Where real historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, sentiments, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events, personality, disposition, or attitudes of the real person, nor to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. Save the above, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
© 2022 Nathan H. Green
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