During our tour of the Vehicle Assembly Building our group was joined by a tall, angular man in a blue jumpsuit. The guide spoke for some time pointing out the features of the structure, until one woman raised her hand and said, “I’d like to know about that man in the blue jumpsuit.”
The switch flipped, and the diffuse attention of the group either magnetized towards the man in the blue suit, or, in a few cases, away. He was of course an astronaut. His name was Rick Linnehan; he’d been on four missions, had spacewalked (“a misnomer”), and put his original training as a veterinarian to use at least once as an astronaut, nursing 200 rat dams and pups in transit to the International Space Station. He spoke clearly, with simultaneous self-assurance and self-effacement, patiently answering all our questions, one by one. And when he talked about the amount of force needed to reach orbit, the “smash,” he seemed like a Nascar driver with a Ph.D.
Is it clear yet that this person had almost an indecent amount of charisma? If there were such an instrument as a charismometer, Rick Linnehan, and the other astronauts and top NASA administrators would be pegging out. Marian and Jason told us a main requirement for being accepted into the space program is being good with people, since PR is such a substantial part of the job.
The astronauts we met emphasized, quite rightly, the massive collective effort involved in spaceflight. They were universally humble, at least in personal interactions. The I Ching says “All things come to him who is modest and kind in a high position.” There are no positions physically higher than those of astronauts, and their lives seem largely to consist of very public service.
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