A Happy Man

This has absolutely NOTHING to do with Excel or Access but it’s something I really wanted to talk about – so there …

This picture is of Scott Kelly, an American Astronaut, who is sitting in a warm and cozy Russian helicopter after landing in the middle of Kazakhstan in a Soyuz capsule two days ago, after spending 159 days on the International Space Station, half of that time commanding the place.  During his stay there his twin brother’s wife, Representative Gabrielle Giffords, was shot in the head in an assassination attempt and he had to deal with all that from the most remote outpost of anyone from on or above Earth with no way to provide more than long-distance support.  Yet despite all that Scott Kelly pulled off everything they asked him to do like the good Navy Man he is.

I was lucky enough to have NASA TV added to my cable service last year and I have been able to watch the activities on the ISS regularly throughout Kelly’s tenure up there.  I have watch a man being both a disciplined professional but also a human being showing the classic “Grace under fire” that I’m sure NASA expected of him while there.

So there he sits with a wrist band with his sister-in-law’s name on it that someone brought to the landing site, happy in the knowledge that not only has he survived yet another trip into outer space, his 4th I believe, (including a fiery landing in one of those very basic but VERY reliable Russian capsules) but that he did his job all the way.

I talk here a lot about the joys of what we do, but I really gotta say that we and nearly the entire world is full of “pikers” compared to this guy – and he deserves to be smiling like that.

Well done Commander Scott Kelly !

Dick