Nancy ScottTWO LIVES CONVERGEI am an author. And I am a NASA nerd. I've been writing for over thirty years, and I've lived long enough to have seen the entire United States Space Program. If I can't write, Most people think I don't do anything. After all, I'm not famous or rich. Friends still marvel when I say I can't go to the concert or the mall because there's a space walk or a docking. "A what?" they ask. I explain, but they mostly still don't get it. But my two favorite lives recently almost converged. In the Spring of 2013, I received a NASA e-mail inviting people to send haiku with the promise that three of them would be sent on the MAVEN spacecraft. MAVEN would launch in November of 2013 to investigate the upper atmosphere of Mars. I click keys, craft words, I search idea words–air, weightless, stars, Mars. How hard could three lines be? It's only around seventeen syllables. I plan writing time Thursday afternoon, but a friend says she heard a news clip about a space-station ammonia leak. I check NASA TV and find nothing. I am not technological, so I can't, without help, access NASA's website. Finally, Thursday night, I hear that same news clip. The crew is not in danger, and I know the leak is outside. A small leak has been there for quite awhile. Friday morning priority becomes the space-station Live program, which airs at 11 a.m. Eastern on NASA TV. Descriptions of snow that isn't snow. A leak that has gone from 5 pounds a year to perhaps 5 pounds a day. And an emergency space-walk Saturday. And, just for good measure, a note from my apartment management that my balcony railings will be painted on Saturday and I will have to let the painter in. By 7 a.m. Saturday morning Pre-Breathe is complete, but Airlock Depress has not started. I run errands to the drugstore and to buy fruit, milk, and evil donuts. I race back, missing only Airlock Depress and a little of "tools and tethers." The crew hurtles at Around six hours of watching, plus painter and lunch and doing dishes. Sunday is blessedly quiet and my balcony has not been destroyed. White paint on grooved wood I need to focus on Mars. Amazing how far one poem (life) might go. Launch past math and myth. What height of immortality it would be to have my haiku orbiting Mars! Extra-terrestrials might read these haiku and know that humans think deeply. Tuesday morning, with the help of a computer wizard, I send off my name and my MAVEN haiku. I learn that people will vote for their favorite pieces, but time to vote is short. How many haiku will be better than mine, and how many will they get? Secret poets Popularity Craft, faith, good will. Unfortunately my launch attempt gets scrubbed due to technical inability to coerce everyone I know to vote for me in time. MAVEN launches on November 18, 2013. In a news conference after launch, a flight DVD is shown on the solar panel. There were 15,000 haiku submitted, but my name is there as one of the 100,000 names submitted. I have a printed-out certificate that says so. NASA will probably try a writing project like this again. I will be ready. (By the way, astronaut candidates are required to write a limerick or a haiku as part of their application process.) Two lives converge. MAVEN entered Mars' orbit in September 2014.
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