The First Two or Three Hours, Total Silence and Disbelief

The First Two or Three Hours

Unfortunately, the first two or three hours of the day are spent either dealing with e-mail, the telephone, faxes and paper work. A lot of this concerns interaction with other researchers, and dealing with hardware and experiment issues. The rest of the day may involve designing new experiments, organizing equipment and looking after experiments which are in progress, and then finally escaping from the lab at a reasonable hour to sit down with a coffee and make sense of the data you have being generating all day -- it's wild.

Total Silence and Disbelief

I guess a particularly profound moment was a little over a year ago, when I was involved in the design and preparation of a satellite plant growth experiment. We had spent almost four days non-stop preparing the payload for integration into the rocket and then with great excitement waited for the final count down. At 6:00 p.m. in the evening that mighty rocket rose from its fiery pad and soared to the sky, and then with one mighty explosion it was all over. All that effort from so many people and we all stood there in just total silence and disbelief.

The greatest sadness came more from what might have been achieved. I guess a deeper sense of focus and passion prevailed, and so a new experiment was just recently flown on the shuttle with great success, but the memory of that earlier mission will always be there.