OUTSIDE, INSIDE -- A Report from Japan

The rugged landscape all over Tanegashima Island in Japan camouflages the vigorous, motivated culture all around. 

The rugged landscape all over Tanegashima Island in Japan camouflages the vigorous, motivated culture all around. 

Steering wheel on the right side of the car, my windshield wiper slaps back and forth every time I try to signal a turn at an intersection. The controls are opposite their placement in The States, and deeply wired muscle memory is a tough thing to reprogram. I regard each and every moment at an intersection like brain surgery, with one false move potentially causing irreparable damage.

Driving on Tanegashima Island to the eponymously named Space Center presents a visitor with powerful reminders that Japan is an intentional, motivated nation. With a land area smaller than California, the country boasts a world-class space center, carved into a rugged stretch of Pacific beach. Tectonic activity through the ages aggressively defined the formation of the terrain, with huge cliffs towering over deeply folded valleys. Ancient upheavals of Earth's suboceanic crust sent sandstone spires rising, the sedimentary stone establishing rugged rules for hearty inhabitants while occasional outcroppings of harder, volcanic matter remind visitors that they're squarely in the Ring of Fire. The intensely sculpted geography forced road builders to draw inspiration from bowls of udon noodles; wild twists and turns test drivers concentration every single kilometer. It's over these roads that NASA must gingerly truck the GPM satellite from the Shimama Port, a few kilometers distant as the crow flies, but a substantially longer drive across tangled, winding roads.

Tanegashima Island is broken into three sections. Most of the NASA crowd lives in a warren of small hotels in the southern section called Minamitane. It's an unassuming town, clearly a bedroom community for the nearby space center and its support services. School kids in brown uniforms and smart black backpacks scamper on the narrow sidewalks each morning, running to school. Far from the blazing neon and sodium glare of downtown Tokyo, Minamitane flickers while the great capitol city to the north blazes. But like small towns everywhere around the world, the affairs of distant places matters little compared to day-to-day realities of making a living. Hotel and restaurant workers realize an unusually large crowd of jet-lagged and hungry Americans are in town, and it's clear that beyond a short term business opportunity, there's a genuine local enthusiasm to be part of this extraordinary multinational effort.

Minamitane shows signs of the hardscrabble existence that must attend its remote location. Few lights glow after the sun goes down and restaurants are best found with a good plan before setting out and a map in hand. Many buildings need paint. Outdoor commercial signs--fewer than a visitor might initially expect to see--have clearly weathered many seasons. But despite its apparently weary presentation, Minamitane has clearly tried to show it's best face. Yellow banners welcoming NASA flutter along streets and not a scrap of trash appears anywhere.

It cannot be overstated: this is a profoundly intentional nation. To support the army of American staff who have descended like starlings, a flock of matching silver Toyotas have been shipped from the larger island Kyushu. Each morning that flock flits at forty KPH across circuitous roads until it punctures the Space Center's security perimeter, alighting outside a building humbly called STA-2.

If the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, is the soul of Tanegashima Space Center, it's clear that Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is the brains. Mitsubishi manufacturers the HII-A rocket on which the satellite will fly to space, and Mitsubishi runs the operations on site. But the cosmetic polish of the austere, white building where we work has long since faded. There are no markings, insignia, logos, or even lights on its outside, and signs of long use without any frills suggest the decades of Japan's storied economic power continue to recede into the past. Rust mottles the metal front door, while discolored institutional tiles line the dreary, featureless hallways.

NASA staff occupies emotionally vacant third floor offices, with metal desks of 20th century vintage pushed together to make rows of work tables. On the first floor, teams of engineers have comandeered air conditioned rooms and installed racks of computers and electronics and other vital equipment. A small room for donning "bunny" suits leads through an airlock into the cavernous brightly lit clean room. Through this portal visitors who make the transition realize in a heartbeat that the tumbledown trappings outside have nothing to do with the most fundamental characteristic of the place and the culture. Like the town's support that makes this possible, like the exceedingly polite nation that graciously hosts a horde of loud, blue shirted foreigners, this is a profoundly intentional room, maintained by a focused, intentional company, working for a deeply focused agency. Inside the cleanroom a twenty-first century space program hums vigorously. The gleaming GPM satellite reflects lights from around the room like a great jewel hewn from the surrounding mountains. Inside this aging relic of an industrial giant, there is still majesty and promise of great things to come.

--MS

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MECHANICS -- A Report from Japan

Heavy metal. 

Heavy metal. 

The choreography rivals precision aerial acrobats. The teamwork reflects the forward line of a pro football team. This is the vanguard of NASA's mechanical engineering corps, and to experience them at their full operational power is to gain a profound appreciation for how much more goes into spaceflight than big, booming rockets.

Ages range from mid-twenties well into mid-sixties. A handful of women in the ranks reflects a slowly changing demographic, but it's still mostly a male crew. A visitor may have to look carefully, however. The clean room "bunny" suits everyone must wear has a way of turning human morphology into ambulatory, genderless marshmallows. They're always funny the first time someone suits up. Then they're not. Proper clean room garb includes non-static jumpsuits embedded with micro-mesh electro-diffusion wires, designed to insure that even the smallest discharge of static electricity has no chance of damaging delicate circuit boards. Face masks, hair bonnets, rubber gloves, and electrostatically inert booties complete the ensemble. Different missions have levels of "clean", necessitating nuanced differences in clean room attire, but generally speaking, wearers get used to the extra layers in no time.

The mechanical team handles physical aspects of satellite readiness. How do you move a delicate, billion dollar bird around the globe? That's mechanical's job.

Wrenches and muscle power come into play, of course, but the mechanical team needs to be knowledgable about a range of disciplines. Working closely with electrical engineers, environmental specialists, satellite designers and more, seemingly simple decisions go through rigorous analysis and consideration before they're implemented lest unintended down-stream consequences accrue.

That is, of course, the plan. When things come down to old fashioned common sense, this is the team you want to have.

Standing next to Mechanical Team Lead Jay Parker, I watch as the crew prepares to extract the satellite from it's L-frame, the mounting skeleton in which it travelled around the world in its shipping box. "See this?" he says. "There's only three inches of clearance between the satellite and the frame. We can't just lift it up and out. Too tight." The massive overhead crane can handle the weight, but the problem is a risk that part of the fragile solar array scrapes the structural girders of the frame. He tells me the plan is to simply release the satellite from it's mounting base, and slide it out of the frame horizontally. To the question about how his guys plan to keep the satellite inside it's narrow safety envelope, he deadpans, "Very carefully." The technique involves little more than horse sense, patience, superb teamwork, and a sculptor's gaze before striking chisel to stone: they're going to eyeball the situation and simply make sure the satellite doesn't swing where it shouldn't.

Twenty-minutes later the satellite hangs in space, suspended from high-tension cables. Free of its shipping skeleton, the team begins moving it slowly across the vast integration facility where it will be attached to a special articulating table. Centimeter by centimeter, the bunny suited experts make these moves look easy. On the way to space, these stately, precision maneuvers on the ground matter just as much as lighting the main engines.

GETTING THERE -- En Route to Japan

Having travelled halfway around the globe, an advanced satellite makes it's way to a special port, ready for shipment to the Japanese launch facility at Tanegashima.

Having travelled halfway around the globe, an advanced satellite makes it's way to a special port, ready for shipment to the Japanese launch facility at Tanegashima.

Getting up before the sun on a November morning in Alaska may not be an honest way to represent a person's effort. The sun doesn't make much of an appearance at this latitude. The GPM team traveling to Japan takes that as a charge: we're not planning to hang around too long, either.

Back on the icy tarmac, we leave our steamy bus for the gelid confines of our twilight passenger cabin, up, up, up the precarious metal ladder to the top of the C5. Then we wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Turns out that the plane is fine. It's the runway that's too slick with ice.

Engines idling, bellies rumble. Breakfast never happens. The catering we'd expected in the second half of the trip didn't survive the days of our unexpected Alaskan idyll. People crack a few jokes--how could the overnight quartet of engineers assigned to babysit the satellite have eaten everyone's pancakes!-- but nobody complains. As soon as the Air Force clears us for take off, we're heading west at full throttle.

Nine hours above the Pacific, the team settles into zenlike repose. Conversations are minimal due to the ferocious airplane noise and requisite earplugs. Movement slows. Time expands.

Then, after an eternity, we're on approach. Human dynamos spin up. People run through mental checklists and stretch for action.

Minutes after the wheels stop beneath the gray airplane, people move like springs released. The advance team meets us on the ground with no greater ceremony than high fives and back slaps. In minutes the Japanese and NASA ground teams are rolling at full speed. The C5 nose and tail pops open, and it isn't long before our truck trailer gets pulled out the plane. Not far behind, the great white box holding the satellite rolls out smoothly, only to be bolted down to the waiting truck bed.

From a distance the scene looks like the epitome of an ant colony. Dozens of people with well- coordinated roles clamber and labor over objects many times their individual size, yet collectively manage to make short work of huge jobs. The American team coordinates care and feeding of their spacecraft; the Japanese ground team coordinates movement of heavy objects and extensive runway logistics. A handful of US Air Force crew provide essential assistance working in and around the airplane.

In a little less than three hours, the plane is unloaded, sealed up, and gone. With the satellite now loaded onto the truck, a motley foot parade walks alongside, heading a mile distant for a freshly paved section of sea port, retrofitted specially for this enterprise.

The Japanese ground crew performs like Cirque du Soleil; onlookers can only marvel at the display of technical acumen. They make it look easy. The truck pulls up like a demonstration of precision driving. A massive crane, already waiting, hoists a special I-beam into place. Working side by side, NASA mechanics and Japanese ground teams unbolt the satellite, hook lifting chains to the sides, and prepare. As the shades of night stretch shadows long, crews wheel in small, powerful outdoor lamps, turning the scene into an outtake from Close Encounters.

Then: it rises. The great white box containing the largest Earth science research satellite ever floats above the scene. Gracefully it swings over the edge of a great cargo ship, waiting at port. Then slowly it descends into the hold, disappearing beneath the railing. Another quartet of NASA engineers boards the ship, where together with a Japanese crew they'll sail for Tanegashima Island. First by air, now by sea, the satellite inches it's way to space.

ALASKAN LAYOVER -- En Route to Japan

An overheated bus on a frigid Alaskan runway isn't usually regarded as a great way to spend the morning, but adventures have their own logic.

An overheated bus on a frigid Alaskan runway isn't usually regarded as a great way to spend the morning, but adventures have their own logic.

As we descended into Alaskan airspace, we learned we were going to refuel on the tarmac at Elmendorf AFB. We were going to push hard to get back in the air, maybe two hours, maybe three. We touched down, rolled up, shut down, sat up. Then we got instructions: no walking around in the cabin. Why? Static electricity could build up, ignite the fuel. They weren't joking. But that's so yesterday. This morning we awoke when our body clocks kicked us out of bed, no alarm clock necessary. A snow-dusted muster in the Air Force's North Star Inn lobby soon became a bus ride back to the runway. With an ice storm pressing in with several inches of snow forecast to follow, the Air Force determined that we either had to get gone or stay another day in Alaska. Ah, the best laid plans... We stayed. Ice covered wings on a C5 doesn't augur well, and the de-icing plan simply couldn't counteract meteorology. It was a good try, but soon our overheated bus has us heading back to billeting. They say armies travel on their stomachs. Add teams of NASA engineers to the list. With nothing but time on our hands (save for our exasperated logistics experts) thoughts turned to the singular subject of food. Unloading the precious satellite? Transporting it across Japan? International permits, weather issues, electronic safety tolerances, humidity inside the shipping container, landing permits outside of our originally scheduled plans? Nope. Breakfast, please. Someone figured out where to find the base cafeteria, and a droopy trail of cheechako--that is, folks from the lower 48 states--gingerly made their way across the icy sidewalks to find grub. But not everyone. Back at the airplane, the GPM satellite sat like a spoiled pasha in a temperature and humidity controlled box. That meant rotating shifts of our engineering wizards needed to stay at the plane, babysit, troubleshoot, monitor vital statistics. After all, the contents of that box is why we're all here. It's just that being here isn't helping us do anything useful with the contents of that box.

SENSUAL

Sensual beach

Sensual beach

Some kisses you remember for a lifetime.

What is sensual? It's more than physicality. It's tied to memory, to emotion, to dreams. It has to be. The sensual immediacy you have recalling that summer when you were nine years old playing at your friend's house, near that gnarled oak tree in the backyard, is just as resonant now as it was those many years ago. You easily recall the roughness of the bark when you climbed the trunk, projected into imagination as if you were climbing the side of a thousand foot cliff. There was the pleasing exertion in your legs as you levered yourself onto the rickety plywood platform perched high in the main crook of the tree. There was the smell of mud and leaves, July's great passion urging the powerful tree to unfurl. You experienced those sensations then, but you remember them all to this day.

That's memory. Memory sends us into the past. But some expressions of sensuality project solidly into the future.

The press of desire you feel when lost in thought about days not yet lived are always sensual. Are you dreaming of a vacation? Most certainly those thoughts are not just abstractions. You can smell the beach, the mountains, the city, your girlfriend, the cafe where you imagine ordering fruit and cheese, even if you've never visited the location of those dreams. It's a conjuring of future moments not yet lived. It's sensual even just to imagine the brush fine Phuket sand beneath your toes. You're sent through time and space, you hear the sea. The aroma of fresh baked bread drifting over the cobblestones on Rome's Via del Moro, the morning sun sparkling on the medieval facades of the 7th Arrondissement in Paris--you always live where your mind sends you.

Sensuality is not always kind. You'll never forget the stuffy, overheated 5th grade math classroom you endured. You'll never be free of the rotting smell from the back of that twin turboprop bound for Grand Rapids you suffered for hours on the tarmac. You'll never forget the angry hunger you felt growing up when your parents lost their jobs and times got tight. Our senses imprint themselves like water etches paths through stone.

These days we all seem to push sensual experience essentially into two camps. Sensual experiences are either extreme or ignored. That's too bad. I hate to miss a minute of my day, but I also know that I cannot easily live in a purely sensual space. I often wish I could, but I know that's not realistic.

But memory or anticipations for the future can distract us from life, right now. Don't miss the sensuality of life lived today. Feel your feet beneath you. Feel the ways your heels contact the ground first, how you roll through your foot, hip joints making endless pendulum swings in their sockets high above.

Perhaps your hip joints are past their prime, bind a little when they shouldn't, cause you to wince. Perhaps you're young and spry, an athlete, a nymph. Either way, the great pleasure of being aware of your own physicality in the world is yours to experience. It's true: aching joints traditionally do not provoke pleasurable thoughts, but you're thinking about this all wrong if immediate pleasure is the only reward. Even in the distress of our days--and some of us face longer lists of distress than others--there are the roots of our future history. Each feeling is a story, and each story we allow ourselves to feel is a moment when we're each more present in our day. I'm not suggesting that you embrace what ails you, that your pains are equivalent to what makes you feel good, but I am suggesting that you reconsider the feelings, that you recognize them for what it can offer. They remind you that you're alive, and the alternative is hard to imagine at all.

The sensual aspects of our days are the essential balance to the intellectual pressure of modernity. We enjoy seeing an attractive person because of the narrative force that inevitably will accrue to that sensual experience, even if that force is pure fantasy. It's okay: you're human. The next time you smell something in the oven that makes you wonder when supper will be ready, you're doing the same thing.

When you think about this all later today, checking your email, waiting for a red light, replacing the ink cartridge in the printer, remember to connect even those most mundane experiences to your own sensual experience. It's not the smell of the ink that makes us thoughtful. It's the fact that we can stop to notice it in the first place that makes us human. The moment we try to ignore, or worse, suppress the sensual aspects of our lives is the moment that we miss the best parts of the short time we have to be alive.

--MS   (Hey, you can follow me on Twitter @michaelstarobin if you're so motivated.)

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CLOUD WATCHING

Is that an elephant on the left? A tea kettle? Or is it an accumulation of frozen moisture surrounding fine-grained particulates, suspended in the lower troposphere?

Is that an elephant on the left? A tea kettle? Or is it an accumulation of frozen moisture surrounding fine-grained particulates, suspended in the lower troposphere?

What you see in the shape of a cloud is what you see in your mind as an idea just begins to take shape. You can't touch it; you can't easily describe it to someone else. It risks changing suddenly-- even disappearing-- if you don't capture it's essence right now.

Does anyone even have the inclination, to say nothing of the time, for lying back on a grassy hill and watch clouds? There's seems to be so much that supersedes cloud watching these days: so many tasks, tests, and tweets, so many distractions, discussions, departures, and disinclinations.

Are the greatest cloud watchers of all --romantic, existentially minded teenagers -- even able to consider clouds anymore? Does it even happen at all? Even in summer?

It would be a shame to let it go.

Watching them from the ground, clouds are untouchable and essentially unknowable. By ourselves, we can't even prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they're really there. I say this not so much as a theistic challenge, but rather based on the lack of solid evidence we can gather. Ask the person next to you what he or she sees in the same cloud (assuming you've made a few minutes to lie back on a grassy hill somewhere) and you'll likely get a completely different description than what you have in your own head. Visual cues about of what a cloud looks like to you clearly cannot define universally agreed poetic meanings.

But maybe that's the reason people have stopped looking at clouds lately. With so much of society tied to endlessly measurable data, objects invested with purely subjective meaning become anathema.

That in itself should present a bright caution light. As we're all a product of culture, even a culture largely calloused to poetic, romantic thinking, it's essential at least to be attuned to how we all respond to various fractal inputs from the world around us. We see the same things, and still we come away from those things with wildly different perspectives. Where I see a dragon in a cloud, you may see the house where you grew up, branches of the old maple tree hanging close to the eaves above the front door.

The caution is that we're all starting to see clouds in isolation, if we even bother to see them at all. More to the point, without those shared cloud watching conversations we're no longer rolling over onto one shoulder to look at our similarly reposed friends, and say, "A house? Really? I think that part over there looks like smoke rising from a dragon's nostrils." You point at the spot in the sky; they try to follow your finger. You discuss it, perhaps even debate it, you share the moment cloud spotting on a hillside, with the whole Planet Earth beneath you to offer support.

In the exchange between you and your friend, something intangible yet fundamentally real becomes clearer. Even in a space that's fundamentally untouchable, you begin to appreciate something honest and true, even if you're only pointing to masses of condensed moisture in the sky.

All you have to do…is try.

--MS