This is the speech that I would give to Congress if ever I were to address them. :)

Members of Congress,

In in the course of a generation, there are moments that we all remember. Moments where everyone in the nation remembers exactly where they were, and what they were doing. What kinds of moments were these? The day the towers fell. The day John F. Kennedy was shot. Pearl Harbor. If you notice, most of these events are bad things. Everyone remembers precisely where they were because we were collectively horrified: filled with uncertainty about the future, horrified by the capacity of mankind for evil.

But there is another event that is collectively remembered by the members of a generation: the Moon landing, on July 24, 1969, of Apollo 11... an event remembered not only throughout the nation, but throughout the entire world. This is one of the only events in living memory when everyone in the world remembers what they were doing because they were electrified-- filled with wonder about the future, and electrified by the capacity of mankind for good! This moment is a moment that will be famous not just in a generation, but in a hundred generations-- in a thousand generations. It is a first unlike any other-- the first time humans went beyond our home planet and walked on the face of another world.

Since 1969, the consistent value of NASA, beyond satellites, beyond velcro and teflon, beyond LASIK and memory foam, is the consistent delivery of good news, the consistent delivery of wonder at God's creation, and consistent inspiration at the our increasing ability to grasp it, to explore it, and to reach it. I live in Los Angeles, and they've started launching more rockets from the Vandenburg Air Force Base. That's something that gets your attention! How extraordinary to live in a place where you can look up from your bedroom window and see a rocket launching into space! Every day, our constellation of missions beams down scientific data from the edge of the Sun to the edge of Interstellar Space! Every day, American innovation is illuminating the darkest corners of the Universe with the light of human knowledge!

As members of Congress, you have many things competing for your attention. There are mouths to feed, there are roads to build, there are alliances to defend. These are all important. So important, in fact, that I would say that 95% percent of all of our funds should be dedicated to them. 95% percent of our funds: dedicated to the here and now, to the near future, to the world's ever-pressing problems of hunger, and sickness, and disease.

But suppose that we spent 5% of these funds on the future... the far future. Suppose we spent 5% of these funds on something that will be remembered not only by a generation, but by a thousand generations.

When I ask you, Members of Congress, for the money to fund NASA's Mission to Mars, I am asking you to fund a moment that will reverberate through a thousand generations.

I hope you will consider our proposal.

Comment! (0) | Recommend!

Today I woke up early and was in the shower by half past six. It was dark outside, and suddenly all of the lights went out.

So there I was, in the shower, no light to be found. I could barely see the dim outline of the window of the bathroom. As my eyes adjusted, I could see the square of my window a little clearer, until BAM! A SHADOW BLOCKED THE LIGHT! WTF! WHAT WAS OUTSIDE MY WINDOW!

I was a little scared, but I decided that it was probably nothing so I finished washing my hair and I got out of the shower. I mean... what else was I supposed to do? Turns out the lights cutting out and the shadow passing in front of the window were related-- it was a wind storm, and some kind of falling tree had cut out the power. The shadow in the window was a bunch of branches on my neighbor's tree.

There is only wind here about once a year, so it catches us off guard.

I was so distracted by the wind storm and power outage, I forgot that it was Monday and there was supposed to be a guy coming to replace my shower. I guess I'm glad he didn't come by when I was in it. Especially in the dark. So I forgot to leave a key for him or put away my dog.

I went to work, and I was being interviewed by a Brazilian TV station. They are doing a story about the movie "First Man" and they wanted to interview someone from NASA about what is going on right now regarding the Moon in the space program.

I was being interviewed outside the gate of the center, but the wind was so INSANE that the interview had to be stopped every few minutes as some other item would fall over or go whipping across the field of view. My poster of Mare Tranquillitatis, which was neatly wrapped in a tube, burst open and wrapped itself around the tripod leg of the camera. By the time we wrestled it back into a tube shape, it had torn in several places and gotten a bunch of bends in it. I didn't do a great job at the interview, either, because I forgot half of the names of the missions that our lab has going to the Moon, and the other half I wasn't sure if I was allowed to talk about on TV. Oh well--- hopefully it will only be on TV in the nation of Brazil and I will never have to see it.

The day was completely filled with meetings, and when I wasn't in a meeting, people were texting me about work related things. I guess I have a reputation for responding to texts faster than emails. But texts take longer to write.

In one of my meetings I learned that the wind had collapsed my friend's chicken coop, killing one of his chickens. :(

The wall that I had built, on the other hand, with lava rocks sticking out of it, stayed perfectly stable.

By the end of the day I had done nothing except accumulate more things that I was supposed to do. I went home and ate dinner and thought about all of them, and then got ready to go back to work for a late work-a-thon to catch up. I looked at the clock. 7:45. Suddenly: PANIC! I had been signed up for a massage at 7!! I was so stressed out about work that I'd missed my massage!!! WORST DAY EVER!!!!

Now I am back at work. Whether they will charge me for my missed massage is still up in the air. I had missed a call from them during the day saying that the person I had the massage with had to cancel (hallelujah!) but that they rescheduled me with someone else and still expected me at 7 (nooooo!)

Anyway, I rescheduled my massage to Thursday, so if you see me on Thursday night, you should say, "SHOULDN'T YOU BE GETTING A MASSAGE!?!?!"

sigh.

I blame the wind.

Comment! (2) | Recommend!

I am tired. Today I got to work by 7, led a teleconference with the whole science team from 9-10, and then worked feverishly for the rest of the day setting the science team up to do some tasks.

Meanwhile I am trying to build a wall for my Moon rover to rappel down. I have to finish it before the end of the fiscal year so that it can be costed.

Tomorrow I am giving a talk remotely in Providence, Rhode Island at 9 am. Then I have meetings all day. The most fun meeting will be the one at 11, when all of my Moon buddies and I get to be in the same room.

Starting in October, we'll get what they call a "War Room". We'll have the same conference room from now until the proposal is due in May, and nobody is allow in there except for our team. The thing that I'm probably most excited about is to have that room to decorate. I kind of want to buy myself a big throne chair to sit in, and I want to hire my friend who works for the Natural History Museum to build a fake lava wall onto the entire side of one wall. She says that they do it all the time. I also want to cut a big hole in the conference table and sink a scale model of my Moon cave into the hole. Then we can move scale landers and rovers around in and around it using long sticks like it's an actual war strategy room.

So far I have gone so far as to buy a rug from the UK that looks like a big hole in the floor if you look at if from the right angle, and a set of Japanese curtains with the Moon and some cherry blossoms on them to make the doorway look more mysterious.

Oh well, off to bed. Goodnight, Moon.

Comment! (8) | Recommend!

Be it extremely emotional, controversial, messed up, or whatever, this entry has been password protected.

If you know it, enter it; or, ask me for it.

Comment! (0) | Recommend!

I am building a mission to the Moon.

There are many rungs left to climb between the Earth and the Moon, but we are climbing them, one by one.

Political rungs, funding rungs, technical rungs, scientific rungs. All we can do is keep climbing, one at a time, building the ladder as we go.

The hardest time of the month for a Moon mission is right now-- when the Moon is new and cannot be seen in the sky. Not only that, but it's been raining for the last few days and the clouds have obscured the stars.

Today I rolled out of my house and back to work around 9 pm to put in another 4 hours in addition to my normal workday. Then, at the end of my street, I saw it: the perfect sliver of the crescent Moon, hanging just above the Hollywood Hills. Within minutes, it had plunged below the horizon. Dark, orange, so slender that you can't believe that it's really the Moon. It appeared in the sky at the perfect time, as a portent, or a gleaming carrot.

"Get back to work," it said.

Comment! (0) | Recommend!

Last week I went for a massage, and I got a random massage therapist because I had to change my appointment at the last minute.

She arrived to fetch me from the "relaxation room" a bit late, and started to apologize profusely and assure me that I would get my full length of time. I didn't care... I was so relaxed! I had just been in the relaxation room!

She took a long time to talk to me about my chart, and what I liked in a massage, and what I didn't like, and she told me some things about my muscle groups and how they worked together, etc. I already liked the way she really seemed to listen to what I was saying.

About 5 minutes into the massage, I realized that I had found my Massage Soul Mate. She was the best therapist I had ever had, and the massage was like a dream. Soon she said, "Is this ok?" and I said, "Uh, yeah... it is freakin' amazing. I am so happy right now-- this massage is the best."

"You are clearly an expert," I added.

"Really?" she uncertainly. "Today at lunch I was thinking about quitting."

"WHAT?!?!" I said, "That would be a huge crime to the world of massage-lovers everywhere! In fact, I was literally just thinking to myself that after so much shopping around, I had finally found the perfect massage therapist. DON'T QUIT!"

We spent the rest of the massage talking about massage, and her doubts about her abilities, and some of her interactions with other clients that had caused her to doubt, as well as good reactions from other clients that had kept her going. There were so many great things about her-- she was able to massage in a way that was never ticklish (for me, a very ticklish person), her hands were naturally very warm, almost hot, but still dry. Every time she had to move my arm or hand or leg to a different position, she did it so very gently and kindly, like she was moving the hand of a sleeping child. She knew tons of things about kinesiology, to the point that she seemed like a psychic in the way that she could diagnose how I slept, or how I sat in my chair at work. She even diagnosed (and corrected!) a problem in my ankle that I'd suffered several weeks before on a backpacking trip but hadn't told her about. When she asked me about an ankle injury, it took me a moment to remember... I said, "Oh, I never have problems in my ankles... well, actually... now that you mention it, I did have a big problem a few weeks ago when my ankle hurt a lot and swelled up after a backpacking trip." she said, "I could feel it-- it was still out of place, but I fixed it! I guess I do know a thing or two...!"

In the end I was able to convince her by enumerating her many excellent traits as a massage therapist that her massage therapy was a gift to the world, and she shouldn't quit.

Towards the end of the massage, after a lull of silence, she said in a shy voice, "Do you ever feel like some people come into your life at a certain time for a certain reason?"


Yes, I do.

Comment! (0) | Recommend!

Be it extremely emotional, controversial, messed up, or whatever, this entry has been password protected.

If you know it, enter it; or, ask me for it.

Comment! (0) | Recommend!

Sometimes, when you travel a lot, you start to feel like you're living in an airport. This week, for me, that is literally true. I am attending a conference that is taking place in the Westin attached to the Denver International Airport. For three days, the airport is my house, and whenever I desire food or entertainment, I just skitter over there and the airport is my playground.

I have always liked airports. They are simultaneously busy and immaculate, with vaulted ceilings and shining buffed floors. Everyone is in transit, hurrying from one place to another, except for when they're not, and everyone suspends the normal standards of behavior and falls asleep on the floor.

The Denver airport is special because it is my home airport. I remember when it was built. I remember when the state-of-the-art baggage system was shredding people's bags, and when conspiracy theorists blamed it on the spirits of Native Americans over whose graves the airport was rumored to have been built. I have eaten countless times at the Panda Express on the second level. Countless times I have ridden the escalator up from the trains to greet my waiting family, usually wearing silly hats. It feels both strange and comfortable to be living there now.

The airport is full of memories. Leaving for Semester at Sea. Leaving to move to France. I remember as a child walking down the concourse and seeing in red letters above the gates all of the exotic cities that one could visit: Chicago. Los Angeles. New York. Miami. Twenty-five years later, and I've been to all of those places.

Last night my plane touched down at midnight. I checked in at the hotel and then spent the entire night working in the ultra-modern lobby, looking out at the airport, which never sleeps. I went to sleep at 6 am but had to be back in action at 8:30. The airport has everything you need, at any hour you might need it.

Tonight I ate some more Panda Express and found a spot to read on the mezzanine overlooking the exit to the trains. Tired as I was, the busy airport breathed life into me, and I read several chapters of my book about the Moon. I like to read about the Moon.


It's one place I haven't been yet.

Comment! (1) | Recommend!