A Funny Thing Happened to Me on the Way to the Universe:A Dread-Pirate-Roberts Job?

摘要

Istarted working at NASA Headquarters on October 12, 1986. Before I actually got there, it had already proven interesting, though odd. By the time I left (the first time), it was still interesting, and no less odd.rnIn the spring of 1986, I was an NRC Resident Research Associate (postdoc) at NASA Ames, working on Controlled Ecological Life Support Systems (CELSS). During the spring, then Exobiology Program Manager (Discipline Scientist and Biological Systems Research Branch Chief) Don DeVincenzi recruited me to come to headquarters (HQ) for the third year of my postdoc on a little-known opportunity to be a "Resident Management Associate" (gofer). My postdoctoral supervisor, Bob MacElroy, had mentioned the possibility of spending some time at HQ, and I had expressed interest in how HQ worked—or didn't. That was especially true, at that point, in the case of the CELSS program. Bob's most memorable comment about HQ was that "there's not a line to get in the door," which in his laconic Massachusetts accent made it all the more intriguing.