Musing on Rockets

February 27, 2023

Musing on Rockets

As a kid in California there were launches happening sometimes from Vandenberg. We'd gather in the schoolyard and tried to catch a glimpse, but we were too far away for the full effect.

In 2009 Tom Sullivan and I drove out to a small school in Southwestern Ohio and started grad school. I chose a PhD program where I could be among space plant geeks.

In February 2010 I saw a Shuttle launch from Kennedy Space Center. It was stunning. We watched the roll out of the Shuttle Discovery, too. The next shuttle to launch, and the one that would carry our big project, the one that would define my PhD.

In April 2010 I watched in awe as our BRIC-16 experiment went up on the Shuttle. I was even more emotional when it landed safely a month later and the real work began.

When we left Florida in 2010, a friend asked me if I thought I would ever be back. I wanted to, but knew a lot of pieces needed to align for it to happen.

In 2017 the pieces fell into place. I was accepted to be an intern with the Space Crop Production team. We arrived exactly in time to watch the Solar Eclipse on Cocoa Beach. The girls played in the sand and Tom and I held hands, wondering if this was all real.

In December 2017 I celebrated the last day of my internship with a rocket launch. We pulled the kids out of school and watched it together. This was Tom's first launch. It was absolutely magical. When we left town I promised our 4 year old's teachers that we would be back as soon as we could. Years passed. It started to look like that day might never come.

In 2019 it happened. Our youngest saw her first rocket launch when she was just a month old, when we returned to Kennedy for my postdoc. Those teachers remembered us and were excited to see us back. When we visited campus unannounced everyone remembered our oldest's name. And people remembered me at work, too, welcoming me back with open arms.

Today I celebrated the end of my postdoc with another beautiful rocket launch. We watched it together as a family.

Today was the end of something that I hoped would never end. But it had to.

And today I started something new.

Today was my first day as a Plant Data Curator for the NASA Open Science Data Repository. I am a full-time employee of KBR, a company contracted by NASA for many projects, including this work.

Technically I work out of NASA Ames, in California. But the whole team is remote, scattered across the USA. And somehow I fit. In a place where we all fit. We are relieved that we don't have to move.

The end is just the beginning of something new.

Here is a picture of our oldest watching the rocket launch today. Sunset launches are memorable. Especially this one. Many other people got much prettier photos, but I like this one the best because this girl is in it.