well, i spent this morning at a four-hour spaceflight resource management briefing for training academy. a better name for the class might have been “human factors” though, because what the class actually covers is how 6 crew- and ground support-related elements combine to build a successful and safe mission: 1) command, 2) leadership, 3) communication, 4) workload management, 5) situational awareness and 6) decision making.
now when i first saw that list, i rolled my eyes and thought “uh oh, i’m about to sit through 4 hours of common sense.” i expected it to be so-so at best, but it turned out to be really good actually. the course is an extension of commonly-taught ideas and techniques in both the military and commercial aviation worlds (they call it crew or cockpit resource management). there were lots of good examples given from apollo 13, the u.s.s. greenville accident last year, an airplane crash in 1989, and others. i think the biggest reason that i found the course effective, however, was that it was very well taught. the two instructors were competant and logical, and they did a very good job of encouraging class participation. they even got the europeans to speak up, and they’ve been pretty much silent the entire time! wow. 🙂 it was a good morning.
anyway, that is probably not interesting to most of you who read this.
yesterday turned out to be quite a day here at work. like i already mentioned, it was health and safety day. the division breakfast was yummy, and the 5k went well. (i ran 33:30, my fastest time in houston yet…unfortunately still slower than the races i ran in california, but i’m working on it. i want to run a jingle bell jaunt in december in under 30:00. i think i can do it.)
the real excitement of the day, however, was that the president of china, jiang zemin, visited the space center as part of his visit to texas. he was in houston yesterday, he’s at a&m today, and is meeting with bushie at the ol’ ranch tomorrow. anyway, because of his impending visit here, there were a few hundred people, mostly chinese, outside the front gate with signs and flags. half were protesters from a religious group called the falun gong, and the other half were supporters of president jiang. they were all peaceful, but as a result of their presence, the nasa security guards broke out their “serious” uniforms, the ones with army boots on their feet and pistols strapped around their waists. there were unmarked cars at all 4 site entrances, and at the main gate there were probably 12-15 houston police officers as well. pretty cool. we were all abuzz.
well, tonight we are off to my favorite restaurant–the cheesecake factory!–for chris’s belated birthday dinner. yummy.
