“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist…” How many times have you heard that hackneyed expression meaning “You don’t have to be as smart as…” You’ve probably even used it. (As we all have—not singling you out as a hackneyed expression user) Yes, we seem to hold rocket scientists above most others. No one says “It doesn’t take a CPA or a Doctor or a plumber to figure that out.” (Well maybe taxes, surgery, or plumbing.) Certainly there are many smart accountants, doctors, and plumbers out there—seemingly, they just aren’t as smart as rocket scientists.
I guess I fall into the group that has no idea how to work a slide rule and am old enough to think of NASA as the men (yes, they were all men) wearing short-sleeved-white shirts with skinny-black ties and heavy black glasses. There is just something about a slide rule that makes people who don’t know how to work one think people who do know how, are smarter.
Of course gone are the slide rules for the calculator; shirts now come in colors; neckties have gotten wider, skinnier, wider, and skinner; contact lenses are even covered by insurance; and I understand women are allowed to work at NASA, even on the big machines that go “Ping!”
[asset|aid=204|format=image|formatter=asset|title=Heide.jpg|width=250|height=296|resizable=true|align=left]About ten years ago, Southwest Airlines lost one of our best. A wonderful spirit, person, and pilot named Heide Cayouette. I did not know Heide, but it seems everyone who knew her loved her. She lost her life in an accident, but determined to not let her memory be lost, the Cayouette family and Heide’s Southwest Family got together and started a fund. The Heide Cayouette/Southwest Airlines Space Camp Scholarship was established to send a Southwest Airlines Employee’s child to the NASA Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama, every year.
Space Camp is a program of astronaut and mission training. They simulate missions to a space station and each camper takes turns and each performs all of the different jobs of the unit. They have Space Simulators and Shuttle Mission Training and other activities, and they teach the kids to think like astronauts and stress Team-Building skills.
[asset|aid=205|format=image|formatter=asset|title=HannahRocket.jpg|width=200|height=284|resizable=true|align=right]OK, so now you know how this ties to Southwest, but how does it tie to me? I don’t think there is a way for me to say this without sounding like I’m bragging, but my daughter won the scholarship this year! A big deal in the Heaser household; a very big deal!
This episode of Red Belly Radio talks about Space Camp and stories about Heide including how she once climbed a fence from a parking lot to the tarmac to make a flight and how her business card read “Heavy Equipment Operator.” I interview Captain Becky Sparks, who was one of Heide’s good friends and my daughter finds time to talk to me briefly before getting back to her texting on our trip back to Dallas.
[asset|aid=203|format=image|formatter=asset|title=HannahROcket2.jpg|width=100|height=203|resizable=true|align=left]I never thought too much about rocket science, I remember a TV being rolled into my classroom (a big deal then) so we could watch the moon landing and like any normal person I was impressed. But since my daughter went to Space Camp and my attending and touring the facility, along with my research I did for this episode, yes, I really do think this world needs rocket scientists and yes, they are at least one notch smarter than most bloggers/podcasters. And, yes, there just are things that call for a rocket scientists—rockets!
Pictures from top to bottom: Heide in a Southwest Airlines 737 cockpit; Hannah outside of the Davidson Center for Space Exploration; Hannah inside the Davidson Center for Space Exploration with the Saturn V rocket above her.
