Rendezvous #1

Apollo-era Mission Control

Yesterday I worked my first sim ever in the “front room” of Mission Control. I’ve spent more than two years as a back room flight controller, both for ascent and for rendezvous, but this was the first time I’ve ever truly been in the hot seat. I was in charge of the entire rendezvous team, and I was the one talking to the Flight Director and making sure the shuttle was going where it needed to go. And I was SO FREAKING NERVOUS.

The sim went well. Because it was my first one, I had one of the guys from my office sitting with me (every flight controller in my office is certified for the front room except me), and the instructors who scripted what kind of failures we’d have took it easy on me. We had a couple problems that had impacts to our rendezvous, but nothing that prevented us from docking with the space station safely and even on time. Nevertheless, I was tense and on the edge of my seat the entire sim — all 8 hours of it.

When I got home, the adrenaline hadn’t quite worn off, so Jose and I went out to get some celebratory ice cream. We had to go to 4 places before we finally found someone that would sell me a milkshake at 10:45 p.m., but it was worth it. However, by the time I got home the excitement of the sim had worn off and I was instantly exhausted. After being in a constant state of high tension since 1:00 p.m., I just crashed. Last night I slept better than I have in weeks.

An unrelated-to-actual-flight-control but still-very-important part of being in the front room is that I am now responsible for bringing snacks for the back room (and for the FDOs like Becca who need to just bring their own dang food instead of sniping ours, but that’s another story). Since the sim didn’t start until 2:00, breakfast food like kolaches or donuts was out. So I dutifully headed to Randall’s on my way in to work and picked up a box of mini muffins and a box of cookies. The cookies were on sale, extremely chocolately, and looked good enough but about halfway through the sim, one of the guys in my backroom called and said “no one else wants to tell you this, but they’re all nodding in agreement: these cookies suck.”

What?! I was horrified. Here I am, in my very first sim, where the least I could do was bring good food for the people supporting me in the back room — and the cookies I brought sucked. But how bad could they really be? Discussion of the sucky cookies continued throughout the sim. At one point, Becca’s backseater (she’s new to the rendezvous flow and had someone sitting with her as well) wandered into the back room, inspected the ingredient list, and announced that the cookies had no flour in them. Apparently they were gluten-free or something. But still — were they really that bad?

At the end of the sim, one of my back room people said that while everyone complained about them, they still ate them, and there was only one cookie left. “Perfect,” I said, “I’ll come eat the last one.” So I wandered back, picked up a cookie and bit into it.

They were HORRIBLE. I mean, the taste was ok, but they were so dense and hard to chew that any semblance of flavor was negated by the effort it took to simply chew and swallow this cookie. At one point, I bit into it and had to come away empty-mouthed — I couldn’t even bit through the thing!

Worst. Cookies. Ever.