re: #380 thedopefishlives

I would love to visit an observatory, let alone observatories, plural. A visit to some of NASA’s facilities is also on the ol’ bucket list.

I had the honor (sort of) of occupying NASA control central in Clear Lake (aka “Houston, we have a problem”) back when I was a baby FWS biologist. Looked just like the movies represent but feels much smaller. It was empty when I was in there so I could only imagine it with all the people crammed in there during space flights.

Why I was there was weird. They had a mouse infestation. Mice chomp wires making it a matter of national security. I did not do rodent control but they insisted only a fed could go in there. My coworker was their initial contact but didn’t pass the security test to get top secret clearance since her grandfather had attended a communist party meeting some decades before. (I swear, I am not making this up.) They interviewed my parents and their neighbors, friends of mine and who knows else until they decided I was moral enough to go in there and murder mice. I set a few traps, which I could have taught them to do in maybe 10 minutes at a significant cost savings, but noooo. Also stuffed a few mouse holes with steel wool to prevent new entry. High tech.

Then they called me back to fetch the dead mice in the traps and reset them. Three times. For this I had top secret security.