Of course, the down side to the travel arrangements that Justin made for me was that I was traveling:

1. One way.


2. On extremely short notice.


3. With no checked luggage.


4. On a ticket paid for with somebody else's credit card.

And naturally, somewhere in there I won the TSA lottery: my boarding pass was marked with the magic symbols that mean "Give this guy a full screen."

Now as I wrote before, I take airport security seriously. I know it's common for people to grumble about TSA's screening, especially the random screenings. But I support the screening process, including the random screenings: if you only screen according to a set of rules, that creates a pattern that terrorists can discover and exploit. Random screenings mean that any attempt at discovering such a pattern can be discovered. Plus I put myself through college working as a security guard, and I know how hard that job can be for those who are conscientious about their work. So I'm not going to complain about being selected for screening, especially when my travel circumstances probably did fit a risk profile.

But still, there's not complaining; and then there's being impressed by how professional the screeners are. Back in the 2002-2003 time frame, screening was much more frequent, and I could expect extra screening almost one trip out of five. Then the screening rate dropped. This was probably the first time I've been the subject of extra screening since 2003.

And the process has changed. As I said, it's professional. No, I think an even better word might be polished. The TSA screeners at SEA-TAC were polite, efficient, patient, professional, and polished. They explained what was happening, and they explained the process in full before they proceeded. They let me choose how much privacy I wanted. They were careful with all of my belongings. They were as unintrusive as they could be while still doing a thorough screening job. And with me on a relatively short schedule, they held me up for only as long as it took to clear my stuff and my person. As a former security guard, I was very impressed with how these folks did their job effectively and still managed to be considerate toward the public.

Because of my tight schedule, I didn't get their names or badge numbers. I regret that, because I would like to commend them by name to their supervisors. There's another lesson from my days as a guard: everyone complains if you slip up, but no one seems to notice if you do your job well. Well, this passenger noticed; and I thank those TSA screeners for making travel safer and still making it as pleasant as possible.

I wake up. Check the clock. 6:10 a.m. OK, I'm in Seattle. That means it's really 3:10 a.m., since I never change the time zone on my computer. My flight is set for 6:00 a.m., and I requested a 3:30 a.m. wake-up call from the hotel. I guess I might as well get up now, since I have to get ready to leave.

Wait a minute. I didn't get the time from my computer. I got it from the TV. Which is on Pacific time. Just like my flight.

Which left Seattle ten minutes ago.

Oh, crap. I call the front desk. They have no record of my wake-up call being requested.

Yes, I was angry. I'm human, after all. I had to get home for a my nephew's Eagle Scout award and for a family funeral. This was not helping.

But then I remembered: the hotel staff are human, too. And getting mad won't do anything to make it better.

Here's my message to companies that want my business: I don't expect you to be any more perfect than me (which isn't a very high bar); but when you make a mistake, I expect you to make it right, just as I would hope that I would do in your shoes.

And that's just exactly what Justin Gaston, Operations Manager for the Bellevue Redmond Courtyard, did. His staff immediately offered me a free breakfast (for which I had no time, but the offer still was nice); and Justin personally got on the phone, called the airline, and arranged a new flight home for me, all at no charge to me. Justin was polite, helpful, apologetic, and sympathetic; and he absolutely did right by me.

Yes, I got to DTW eleven hours later than scheduled. Yes, the hour was then so late and the weather so bad that I had to spend the night in a hotel near DTW. Yes, I got home over a day late, by the time all was said and done. Yes, the world's an imperfect place. Nothing's perfect.

But the service that Justin and his staff provided and the efforts they did to correct their mistake came pretty darn close to perfect.

If you'll be in the Redmond area, I strongly encourage you to patronize the Bellevue Redmond Courtyard, 14615 NE 29th Place, Bellevue, WA 98007 (Ph: 425-869-5300). They have reasonable rates and fine rooms, with free high speed Internet access. They're conveniently right across the highway from Microsoft's main campus if you have business there. And they have a staff that should make the Marriott chain proud.

In my post on my visit to the Cosmosphere, I oversimplified the timeline from Mercury to Apollo. Serves me right for working from memory. Since then, I've had a chance to refresh my failing memory through rereading Apollo by Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox.

I say rereading; but in a sense, this is reading anew. I own a copy of the first edition of this book, and have read it three times. I find it to be without a doubt the most thorough history of Apollo that's available. Why? Because where other fine books — such as Chaikin's most excellent A Man on the Moon — focus primarily on the astronauts, this book is first and foremost about the engineers and managers who made the flights possible. I don't want to disparage the work the astronauts did. Indeed, this book (like many others) makes clear that their work began years before they climbed into their spacecraft, and involved plenty of engineering on the ships themselves, along with their training. I have the utmost respect for the astronauts; but as I wrote elsewhere, I'm not the astronaut type. But these engineers... Ah, now these are my people, my inspirations... These are the people whose example moves me to try to do better in my day-to-day work. Whenever my work seems tough, I look at what they did, and say, "No, my job really isn't rocket science. I can do this."

And Murray and Cox's book was the one that made me really appreciate the intellect and discipline and creativity and ingenuity that made Apollo happen. And so, when I saw the new edition with its colorful new cover at the Cosmosphere gift store, I couldn't resist. Mr. Murray had already told me (in private email) that there wasn't much new in this edition, and he couldn't honestly recommend buying a new copy. (So why a second edition? As they explain in the new foreword, the book has become very popular since the first edition went out of print, and they get lots of requests for it. With good reason, I might add.) But fortunately for their bank account, I'm weak. I'm rereading the book now, and finding it even better than I remembered it. It appears that Murray and Cox may have gone the self-publishing route on this edition, since it's published by their own South Mountain Books. I looked into self-publishing for some of our course materials a few years back. Judging by this book, the technology has improved. The quality of the printing is very good; and as I indicated, the new cover is stunning. The only major change from the first edition is that the photos in this edition aren't on glossy paper. That actually makes for a stronger binding, I believe; but it makes it harder to browse to the pictures, since the picture pages are just like all the other pages.

Anyway... Apollo explains the political history of the program very well. It tells how President Kennedy inherited a space program he really didn't want (though Vice-President Johnsn was a strong supporter), including Project Mercury; and then it tells how, after Soviet space triumphs and the Bay of Pigs debacle, President Kennedy needed a symbol of success. And so he turned to the very space program he once disdained, and said: "What can you give me?" And the managers named a number of conservative, very attainable goals; but none of them was inspiring, and none would demonstrate superiority to the Soviets.

And then they suggested the more extreme goal: "We could go to the Moon." And that grabbed President Kennedy's imagination; and that's what he promised us and the world that we were going to do.

Now from a geopolitical and domestic political position, that proclamation was brilliant: a bold challenge to the Soviets and a bold challenge to the American people. Yet from a technical perspective, it might have proven a horrible misstep. To this day, many in the space travel business will argue that a space station should have been our first goal before the Moon, and that we would have been much farther along in space today if we had followed that course; and indeed, some still pressed for that approach. But with President Kennedy's assassination, Project Apollo took on the mantle of Legacy to a beloved President; and Vice-President Johnson, now succeeded to President, had been NASA's strongest supporter in the Kennedy administration, and was determined to see the Legacy through. That's a combination of historical forces that no one could withstand.

(In a bit of alternate history speculation, I have to wonder what would've happened to Apollo and NASA had President Kennedy lived? Would NASA have persuaded him to let them follow the more cautious approach? Would we have a permanent space colony today, maybe even including settlers on Mars? Or would his attention have lagged as Vietnam and other problems rose? Would a Congress less in awe of his memory have been more willing to cut NASA's funding? Would we even today be waiting for that first footprint on the Moon? I can see a case for either possibility; but we're stuck with the future we have, not the might have beens.)

So Apollo tells of the wrap-up of Project Mercury (the effort to get Americans in orbit), and also of the Gemini program (the effort to learn how to maneuver and work and rendezvous in space); but both are told only briefly and peripherally. As the title suggests, the focus here is all on Apollo. The book is divided into Books:

• Book One, Gathering, tells of the formation of NASA, and of the history of the decision to go to the Moon (as above, only with a lot more history and detail).


• Book Two, Building, tells of the design and construction of the Saturn V, culminating in the story of the first unmanned launch. And along the way, it tells of The Fire. All NASA histories have this in common: there's before The Fire, and after The Fire; and those are two different stories, and even a casual reader can tell. NASA changed in that event. In facing death, NASA had to grow up in some necessary but sad ways. The Can Do people learned that sometimes they couldn't.


• Book Three, Flying, tells the history of the flight controllers in Mission Control, and how they worked with the astronauts during the Apollo missions. And it's here that the real engineering all comes together. As a computer geek, I empathize with these earnest young men glued to their monitors, each watching dozens of simultaneous data points and looking for some key discrepancy that might affect the mission. The book's descriptions of this work are the closest literary equivalent I've ever seen to what it's like to chase down a really ephemeral bug in a mountain of code... except that my bugs usually don't have the lives of three astronauts hanging in the balance... and I usually have more than twenty seconds in which to analyze the data... and I don't have to decide whether to scrub the most-watched mission in history based only on my possibly buggy code... and I don't have to worry about lightning striking my machines and resetting everything right in the middle of the most critical operations... and I don't have to worry about a fuel cell exploding and putting the entire organization into hyper-overdrive. Murray and Cox explore each of these incidents in depth, and they really make me feel the tension of being in the MOCR, making life-and-death decisions based on instinct, experience, and ceaseless drills. They also give what I believe to be the definitive explanations for The Fire and the Apollo 13 accident, as well as a blow-by-blow description of the Apollo 12 lightning strike that made my hair stand on end.

After this, I may go reread Chaikin. I also have EECOM Sy Liebergott's biography (a signed copy picked up at the Cosmosphere) to read. And I may go reread Lost Moon. But this will always be the book that revitalized my childhood love of space travel and made it relevant to me in my career today. For that alone, I would recommend it; but more than that, it's just a fascinating view of Apollo that's usually seen only in the background. That makes it even more valuable to the space fanatic.