NASA: Day 6

Ahh - the sweet taste of a half off a frappuccino after me missing exits and driving in circles because I chose a new destination, adding another 20 minutes to my drive time. I know Mr. Dowdell is probably making fun of me with Mrs. Grimm about kids and frappuccinos and $4 coffees and stuff. Will I delete this paragraph? Maybe. Haven't decided yet.

Today started off with me coming in at 9:00 where Audrey, Claire (a new girl), and I went over to a girl named Bethany who focuses on the environmental effects of NASA. What does she do? Something I have little to no interest in, that is, lots of paperwork. And this isn't just a little paperwork, but these are 4" binders of paperwork of species and binders of paperwork needed for environmental effect studies. When NASA wants to launch a weather balloon, they have to have public meetings and events where these little groups of people show up and demand that the weather balloon will harm the environment because it will fall into the forest reserve and then NASA has to compromise by saying "If the weather balloon falls on your property and you return it to us, we'll pay you to return it." And then everyone's happy again.

There's a birds nest that's getting in the way, so she gets a phone cal asking if they can just destroy the nest or get rid of it. And then she has to determine what type of bird it is and ask if there's eggs in the nest before they can just get rid of the nest because some natural wilderness association says they can't do that.

Now, that's not as big of a deal as you might think, until it comes to something more important than a stupid bird's nest. Like - some eggs that are now on the top of a leaking roof. And as the roof leaks and the buckets collect the water for what seems like months, the employees complain "why it's taking forever to fix the God D**** roof". The people in facilities who maintain the buildings can't do a darn thing because some bird laid eggs on the roof. So maintenance can't do anything because of "the wilderness protection act blah blah blah and the nature reserve act blah blahs." So what happens is that the building leaks, leaks, and leaks until November when it's freezing cold before starting the repairs and all the birds migrate and lay their eggs somewhere else.

And that's just two of the hundreds of problems that Bethany deals with on a daily basis. And she's just one person on her team of 30 some people (more when contractors are added) who go around inspecting and making sure harmful chemicals are being properly disposed, people aren't clearing out birds nests, and setting up meetings and adding data to the federal registry and making sure people follow laws.

Oh, and there's a bunch of these $300,000 to $500,000 mandated environmental studies that have to be done for any medium/large projects. If NASA wants to put a $20,000 runway  in Plum Brook, it's going to cost them another $300,000 to see what would happen to "species of interest" or "endangered species" and how much grass they'd kill and once they're done with that, they'd have to do the public meetings again so people can complain that "there's going to be loud noises and planes and it's going to decrease the property value" and then they have to perform the survey to predict how much property values will decrease and so on. It's absurd how much work people have to do because of these laws. One time, NASA had to pay some certified guy to sit on a bench and stare at a tree for two hours at dawn and dusk to watch bat activity before they could even trim the trees. And if they don't trim the tree within 24 hours of the guy clearing NASA, they have to hire this certified bat guy to come back and stare at trees again.

I went over to building 77 to see what the Walsh people were doing, and they weren't there - probably eating lunch or with someone else. Dominic was there, I talked with him about what he was doing before getting lunch with him, Audrey, and Claire. I packed lunch this time although I still spent $1.90 on a soda there. Darn cafeteria contractors.

That's a microprocessor hooked up to an oscolliscope

During the second half of the day, I met with Joyce who worked in the safety department. Now, the safety department is entirely different from the environmental regulatory department because there's a lot of work to be done. They have 30 people in the department including contractors (that was her rough estimate), and they go around making NASA safe. Now these 30 people don't do any of the construction, but they just manage the safety that goes on there. There's a person whose entire job is to train and oversee crane operators. Not any other construction equipment. Just cranes. There's people making employees aware of safety, identifying what's unsafe, getting construction people to put up a fence. Joyce introduced me to a few others who reminded me of Mr. Dowdell. The man was in his 50s, and he recalled a conversation after the Darth Love (his nickname) moved from construction to construction safety.

Bill: You have to wear this safety harness to go up on the roof.

Construction worker: which roof?

Bill: The one that's flat and has rails on all the sides so you can't fall off.

Construction: But you never wore a safety harness to go on the flat roof with safety rails?

Bill: Yeah, but you have to.

[Note: Bill isn't his name. I made one up.]

I also put on a climbing harness. A lot of people complain about safety things like harnesses, but it took like 20 seconds and was comfortable.

After I put on the harness, I imagined hanging off the top of a building cleaning windows from the outside of a 5 story building and thought "that'd be a really cool job" cleaning windows on the side of a building 5 stories tall.

We went to a safety meeting for 30 minutes where two safety people argued over the phone about whether SpaceX needs to adhere to NASA's safety guidelines despite being a contractor. But it was something really small and specific. My 5 year old interpretation of it was: "Does SpaceX need to follow NASA's property damage precautions for SpaceX's equipment on NASA's projects?" To me, this is like saying if I buy my own phone instead of borrow my Dad's, does Dad have to force me to use my phone like it were his, or do I get the freedom to say chuck it in the lake? Obviously, I'm not going to toss it in a lake. SpaceX isn't going to damage their own property, but this was the specific type of stuff they were arguing about, for 30 minutes, and it was about (you guessed it) cranes.

Joyce was really nice, and their intentions are good. They're just following laws and OSHAA requirements. OSHAA is a good thing, and I'd rather have safety procedures than not have them. Are they over the top? Sometimes, it seems like it. The safety harness on the roof with rails is extreme, but at the end of the day, zero people go home dead, and that's always a good thing. I'd much rather have the safety protections and not need it, than need it and not have it.

After the meeting, safety became more interesting as Joyce showed us some of the devices and techniques they use to keep people safe. Shoring keeps the soil from crumpling in on itself and burying people. Another option is sloped soil in terms of burying holes. Climbing equipment with shock absorbers are always nice, and then we said our goodbyes.

I talked with Tom. His daughter-in-law worked for Comdoc, and she got paid (partially) in stock options. When they sold to Xerox, their shares sold for some ridiculous amount of money. They're probably millionaires.

More adventures ahead!