Tales from the Hood: L is for Launch!

Thursday, May 5, 2011 may go down in the annals of space flight. People may look back on that day and recognize a pivot-point in man's conquest of the cosmos. History books will venerate the day and folks will say, "I remember where I was on that fateful occasion!" After all, it was the day that the spark of life was lit in the heart of the world's soon-to-be most accomplished astrophysicist.

Once a year Boeing, like many other megalithic corporations, gets all schmaltzy and family-friendly and sponsors a "Take Your Child to Work" day. They glitz it up good with welcome breakfasts and lots of tot-appropriate classes and whiz-bang demos and goodie-bags, and for one shining day the grey halls of industry are overrun with teeming hoards of colorful youth. Technically L missed this year's age requirement by two months, but my manager, obviously fearing age-discrimination litigation, chose to overlook the fact and allowed me to sign her up. (There was no hope, however, of passing N off as legal.) Never was there a more spazzed out kid as she when Mommy broke the news to her the day before. L would get to go to work with Daddy in the morning and see all the things that go on where he works! A heart-wrenching of equal magnitude on the opposite end of the spectrum was wisely averted by promises to N that he would get to check out of school at lunch time and go up to El Segundo with Mommy to retrieve his sister and have lunch with his Daddy. This, with many promises of workday trips with Daddy in years to come managed to soften the blow.

On Thursday morning L was up at 5:00am with me - much earlier than we had any need to be up - and she presented herself fully bedecked in her finest church dress. She was heavily wounded a couple of hours later when Mommy told her she couldn't wear it and to put on something more business-casual. When the fateful hour arrived Daddy and L proceeded out to the car for the hallowed drive to the aerospace Mecca in El Segundo. Emotions ran high on all fronts. L was thrilled and at risk of hyperventilation. N managed to keep it all together, but the eyes were a little misty here and there. Mommy was maudlin, experiencing yet another of those "they're growing up too fast" moments. And I was stoked to get to use the carpool lane.

My work site has a pretty big campus and L was rather impressed with all the buildings and the security guards at the gates. She knew she'd hit the serious stuff, however, when she got to ride up six stories of a spiral garage to find a place to park. We walked to my home org's main building where they had graciously put on a breakfast for all the visitors. L scarfed scrambled eggs and chocolate milk while watching videos of satellite solar array deployments and Proton rocket launches. She managed to get a thin coating of bacon grease and pineapple juice all over the two-foot wide satellite model that was passed around.

After the breakfast it was off to the demos! The first thing we hit was a demonstration involving liquid nitrogen. We sat on the front row while an engineer explained about how super-cold the liquid was and how it was used to test the satellites at space-like temperatures. He then took volunteers to come and dip things in his drum of liquid N₂ and examine the results. One kid soaked a spongy rubber ball and was amazed at how hard it was when it emerged from its bath. The docent told him to throw it against the wall, and when he did it shattered into a dozen pieces. L kept a small fragment which got all spongy again once it thawed out. At one point they brought out a huge restaurant-sized alluminum mixing bowl filled with a frothy cream and sugar mixture. One of the docents stirred the pot while another poured a scintillating stream of liquid nitrogen into the mixture. Within seconds they were scooping out ice cream for the kids to eat. Eventually L got called up and was given a turn to pick something to freeze. She chose a cut tulip from a bouquet sitting nearby. She goggled up, put on rubber gloves, was given some big old barbecue tongs and a flower. She lowered it down in and a few seconds later pulled out a brittle, frosted tulip with petals that shattered like glass when she touched them. She kept her decapitated tulip stalk with her the rest of the day.

Several other sessions followed: she made an FM radio out of individual electronic components, she learned about composting (and got a small Chinese take-out box of garbage-devouring earthworms to take home), she got to walk the myriad halls of the factory and see satellites being assembled from an observation deck. And, most exciting of all, she got to make her very own mini-satellite out of a mountain of arts and crafts supplies. The four hours flew by and before we knew it, it was time to meet Mommy and N for lunch.

Where does one go for lunch when one has aerospace on the brain? In-N-Out, of course. Now there's nothing inherently high-tech about a Double-Double and a chocolate shake contributes little, if anything, to a day of space-play. It wasn't the In-N-Out in the abstract; it wasn't the In-N-Out, per se, that was the drawing point - it was this particular In-N-Out. This particular In-N-Out is located at the tail end of the north landing runway of the Los Angeles International Airport. (Known as LAX, which is clearly a reference to its security.) At this particular, unique and utterly singular In-N-Out one literally sees the world coming and going; one watches the wheels of civilization move, and considering how close the planes are, its not entirely inconceivable that you might just have a bolt from one of those wheels land in your order of French fries.

After we'd finished our lunch and had our fill of watching some of Boeing's other fine products parade by we packed up and headed out. For me, it was back to work. For Mommy, L and N, it was home to discuss the events of the day. (As Stacy listened to all of the things L got to do she became more and more bitter, wondering when they were going to have a "Take Your Wife to Work" day. "I've never gotten to see a satellite," she moped.)

That evening when I got home we decided to put what L learned to good use. A satellite doesn't just show up on orbit one day. Once the design and building is complete it undergoes months of rigorous and crucial testing. Not willing to trust our luck, we needed to verify that L had produced a flight-qualified product. We took her finely and exquisitely designed satellite and put it through its paces.