Goddard Center home to innovation

Ever wonder why women are so confusing? Why hot dog buns are sold in packages of eight while hot dogs come in packages of 12? Why you get $4.50 to equiv. for dinner at MegaBYTES while you would have to pay $10 cash to get into Terrace? Or how about how a dust storm could possibly cover the entire surface of Mars for a span of three months? Well, there is obviously no place on this planet that you could find answers to the first three questions. There is, however, a place to find information about the fourth.

That place is NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), and it's located in Greenbelt, a suburb northeast of Washington, DC. Founded one year after NASA itself, the flight center is actually named after the father of modern rocket propulsion, Robert Hutchings Goddard. Goddard's accomplishments in the area of rocketry and space flight are abundant, including the development and operation of the first liquid fuel rocket in 1926. Other achievements of his may seem elementary to us today, like the first successful launch of a rocket with a motor pivoted on gimbals under the influence of a gyro mechanism. Now, I remind you that while it may seem as if we could just slap a gyro mechanism together and influence a gimbal or two in our sleep, this development was made in 1937, before computers and MP3s and, from what I've been told, dirt.

So, what exactly does the GSFC do? It gathers information. That is, more specifically, "to expand knowledge of Earth and its environment, the solar system and the universe through observations from space." This was mentioned at their website at http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/. Hence, they must design, build and test spacecraft for a specific mission, and they must gather and interpret the data collected during this mission.

How do they do this? The primary facility encompasses 1,121 acres of land and includes 50 buildings. Included in those buildings are several thermal vacuum chambers. Inside these chambers, scientists are able to test three of the crucial qualities of a spacecraft: temperature extremes, solar radiation and vacuum. Inside, temperature can be varied from less than -300 degrees and up to 300 degrees. They can also simulate radiation that emanates from the sun and its effect upon the spacecraft. Finally, vacuum pumps clear the chamber of all air. And what's in the other buildings? Lots and lots of smart people. The GSFC boasts the largest organization of scientists and engineers dedicated to their goal of information gathering.

With as much as NASA tells the public about its little Goddard Space Flight Center, they also take an apparent pride in keeping the public in the dark about many of their inner workings. The official GSFC website has a link to its own intranet. If this is anything like the Hopkins network, they're probably sharing photos of people laying out on nude beaches, people picking their noses and gratuitous cleavage shots. Remember, they have high-powered telescopes that are in space solely "learning and sharing knowledge about the Earth."

In an attempt to crack their understandably high-security operation, I used their web page's search engine to seek out data on the phrases "classified information" and "top secret" only to find that the scientists at NASA have covered their tracks well. The response for both searches was "no files found on specified criteria." Is it a cover-up? What do you think?

On a more sobering note, the Goddard Space Flight Center Visitor Center has been closed indefinitely due to recent events and all events and tours have been canceled until further notice. They are, however, still in search of customer service-oriented volunteers at the Visitor Center. No experience is necessary. You can get in touch with them by calling 301-286-8981, Mon-Fri between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.