Da una discussione di NSF, in quanti riuscite a immedesivarvi ? 
Quando avete un po’ di tempo vi consiglio di leggerle tutte… perchè non avete idea di quante siano quelli in cui ci si può immedesimare…
P.S. in alcune ci sono piccolissimi riadattamenti del sottoscritto… 
[i]* While looking at the preheat countdown timer on your oven, you know exactly what would be happening during the terminal count of shuttle at that precise moment.
- You tend to call out sick from work the day of a shuttle launch. (I feel sniffle coming on!)
- All of your English Comp. Papers and thesis’s are on the space program.
- You have a picture of the space shuttle on your desk at work.
- on your note book for school you have the space shuttle program patch
- You’re sitting in a room within LCC listening to the loops for the ongoing Space Shuttle mission countdown AND reporting on it to forumastronautico
- You stock up on toner cartridges and cartons of paper when they’re on sale to keep from running out printing the manuals and checklists for the current and next missions.
- when your Nephew wants to be an Astronaut so bad for Halloween because you show him launch footage on your computer
** and you actually have a spacesuit for him to wear. - You postpone any job applications until the STS launch happens
- You have a space shuttle launch as a desktop background
- You wear a choker with a space shuttle ornament on it
- You have shuttle launches as cover sheets for you class binders
- You think “shuttle launch” anytime you see/hear someone/somthing counting backwards
- You adjust your steering wheel, lock the doors, and check your mirrors is if it’s part of a launch countdown
- Attempt to bring countdowns into every aspect of life.
- You strongly believe PRCB meetings should be televised on prime time network TV.
- Have an over-riding urge to punch anyone who says a shuttle launch is boring.
- Your wife is already in bed and she’s stiring with thoughts that I’m downloading dirty movies, when really I’m downloading cool stuff from forumastronautico.
- You tell your wife “Don’t plan anything the next two weeks. The shuttle’s going up on Tuesday” and then she looks at you and laughs
- Words such as “scrub” and “go/no-go” have become such an integral part of your vocabulary that you regularly use them in a context that has absolutely nothing to do with the shuttle program.
- You assign a “percent probability” to everything.
- You are at a work-related meeting, you secretly pretend you’re at an FRR
- You get annoyed with the next door neighbor’s tree that is over reaching into your yard, and immediately think of a plan that involves a SCAPE suit, monomethylhydrazine and Mike Lienbach planning the operation.
- You mentally count down the days and hours to the next shuttle launch.
- You get the crew patch for every shuttle flight
- You know what OMS, RCS, RTLS, TAL, etc. actually are!
- You roll your eyes and groan before Marcia Dunn can verbalize her question at a press conference,
- You’ve taught yourself basic meteorology based on Kathy Winters’ forecast slides at Countdown Status Briefings,
- You know when critical S0007 (Countdown) operations will occur before the schedule is posted on forumastronautico or released by NASA,
- You know what S0007 is.
- You ride on a KSC tour bus down the Saturn Causway and Kennedy Parkway and imagine being dressed in a certain orange pressure suit
- More than half of the websites saved in my browser’s Favorites folder are space websites
- One of my major goals in life is to have my name onboard every unmanned interplanetary mission possible (I think my name’s on Cassini, it disintegrated on Deep Impact’s impactor, it’s now orbiting the moon onboard Kaguya, it’s on its way to the Asteroid Belt onboard Dawn and to Mars onboard Phoenix)
- I really hang out for each and every Constellation program document and try to memorise them all!!
- Every time they make a cut to Orion spacecraft capabilities, at best I merely roll my eyes, at worst I get real mad.
- On every page of your monthly space magazine you read the headline and think “I already know that”.
- Every time someone at coffee break mentions a launch-related event (Proton failure, Falcon T-0 almost-scrub, etc.) you follow by “Yeah I saw it live”.
- You know the EMU serial numbers for the next mission by heart
- You request RTLS and TAL/AOA/ATO procedure handbooks from JSC and study those instead of the college textbooks you paid for by weight.
- You leave work early to watch the installation of solar arrays on ISS
- You get sick and miss school every time there is a manned launch.
- You relate important birthdays to space launches.
- You’ve got both a NASA and JPL logo on your car.
- You buy space related bed sheet covers for your kids and wish you could have it on your bed.
- You do the online research to find the ISP, max kg to LEO, GEO for all the major boosters/engines out there as well as for other research engines, as well as for high ISP, low thrust engines, make it into a text file in notepad, and go back to it on occasion to refresh your memory.
- On your commute home you find yourself wondering how many Ares V launches it takes to assemble a mars lander.
- You wonder what a good layout for a lunar base would be.
- You wonder why we can make hard suits that let people operate under hundreds of feet of water, but we can’t make a spacesuit that doesn’t abuse astronauts.
- You wonder what the first person on Mars will say and how it will compare to what Armstrong said, or if the first person there should just stay silent.
- The early 80s you (much to the chagrin of your parents) dress up as a cosmonaut for Halloween and go to your elementary school proclaiming you are a cosmonaut.
- You get a new work laptop you have to consult your pre archived list of space photos and spend half an hour picking the best image to be your background image.
- …you see the letters “I - S - P” and don’t think of MSN, QWest, or any other internet service provider.
- Your car has a Saturn V rocket tag and mission stickers all over the rear bumper.
- You spend the entire commute thinking about the VSE Architecture and how it will work
- You spend the whole night lying there awake worrying that it won’t.
- You sing the old Steve Martin song: “…and I get paid for doing this…!”
- You see someone online with the nickname “FGB” and think “space station module” and automatically assume the person is Russian, even if he/she isn’t.
- You have memorized the final countdown sequences for all the launches you’ve ever watched. “T-15, ignitors on, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, TCSR start, 6, 5, we have ignition of the main engine…”
- You have memorized the webcasts for the various launches you’ve watched and can identify them by sound alone.
- Your life is planned around rocket launches, for example, “I can’t go out tonight, I have a Delta II to watch…”
- You’re studying aerospace engineering and complain that aviation gets too much coverage
- Wallpapers reflect the next shuttle’s current processing/status
- You’re news channel flipping on launch day trying to get the best coverage without stupid commentators
- Spot the ISS in the sky during shuttle missions, because it’s the closest you’ll get to seeing the shuttle in action
- Want to learn russian
- You can’t remember how many times you’ve repeated calls like “go at throttle up” or “GLS is go for auto sequence start” being all alone, and moving your hands as if it was the space shuttle taking off…
- You’re making lunch for your wife and yourself and you have your laptop in the kitchen becasue you don’t want to miss the suit up (Thank you lord for Wi Fi)
- You walk out of your house and you pretend you’re heading out to Discovery this morning. If only my Ford Taurus looked like the AstroVan
- You tell your friends about it and they get confused from all the techno babble-you only understand. (I’ve done that many times)
- You accronym more than space stuff.
- You know more about rocket motors than your own car.
- Wonder why wasn’t I born in FL…
- You use up all the hot water in the shower because you daydream about the various stages of getting ready for liftoff and the actual liftoff
- You daydream about said stages and liftoff while doing your business in the restroom
- You force your new puppy to watch NASA tv webcast during the shuttle launch (and she seemed to enjoy it)
- In quotes from a girl I know “ive always thought with a little more confidence and a little less space talk you could get the ladies” I decided that “the ladies” were less important
- A NASA educator comes by with a shuttle tile from Columbia that has flown in space (not on sts-107 it was removed post sts-2), you throw out your cookies and wipe up the paint chips that came off and put them in the baggie the cookies were in because they were “in space” then don’t talk to your mom after she throws said bag away because “it was just an empty bag”
- Your photographer wife is talking about PMA ( Photo Marketing Association ) you’re thinking Pressurized Mating Adapter.
- You are supposed to be taking a test, but watch the hi-res 1.2mbps stream instead, so you can see launch, LIVE.
- Your parents let you stay home from school to watch all of the launches, power descents, EVAs and reentrys.
- You were cheering when you heard on the radio that Conrad and Kerwin freed the stuck Skylab solar panel.
- Instead of rock and roll music coming from your room and annoying the whole family, you have the capcom “beep” from your Apollo tapes being played… all the time.
You get up at 5am on a Sunday morning because there is an 88 degree flyover of the ISS, and check www.heavens-above.com on a frequent basis for the next decent flyover… - You get angry with the network news not previewing the EVA as their top story.
- You step out of the delivery room during the birth of your first child to watch a shuttle launch
- You complain that 99% of your coworkers aren’t space geek enough.
- You’ve attempted to fashion a nozzle as a trailer hitch cover.
- You do all of your Christmas shopping at NASA gift shops and buy as much for yourself as you do for everyone else.
- You decide the astronaut selection process is bunk and decide to buy your way into space some day.
- You lobby for your favorite VSE concept the way most people do their football team.
- You classify farts by their Isp.
- You wish you’d been smart enough to name a pet or a family member after a milestone in space exploration or just some cool acronym. “Come here, MECO…”
- Your wife asks you a question and you answer by saying “Yeah I think we’re go for that”
- You say “Just five more minutes honey and then we can leave for work. They are talking about the damaged solar array”
- You get excited when your wife asks you anything space related so you can talk with your hands and think you’re actually smart about this stuff but you know that there are people 10000 times smarter than you and they goto the same forum you do!
- You complain that the shuttle gets too much news coverage and the unmanned launches and mission get too little
- Your in your car and you step on the gas a little harder and say “Roger, Go at throttle up.”
When someone asks you if it’s dark outside and you look at the mission control tracker to find out! - You create a custom cover for your cellphone for each shuttle mission, based on the mission patch
- You wish you had a full scale CSM simulator in your basement.
- Flying a single engine cessna with a fellow space geek is treated like its STS-1
- You name one of your children after an astronaut.
- A recent dream involved ECO sensors
- You’ve become severely depressed whenever a shuttle launch is scrubbed.
- You are pumping gas and say things such as “LH2 tank pressurized” or “three main engines ready for ignition”
- You run out of supplies because you were waiting for the Progress to dock…
- You gun the accelerator in your V-6 Jeep and try to lean forward against the acceleration, doing a quick arm check to climate and radio controls to practice arm movements under “higher G conditions.”
- Trying to cross a busy road, seeing an upcoming gap in traffic as a “launch window”
- You like long procedures & checklists for many things you do!
[/i]
