Postcards have been sent. Final count: US 236 postcards, International 84 postcards. Whew! Please tweet a photo of you with the postcard to @corbett when you receive your postcard, hopefully within the next month. The post office doesn’t have any more opening hours while I’m here, so I’m unable to take any additional requests for postcards.
In September, I received two huge pieces of news.
- I’ve been admitted to the University of Southern Maine’s MFA (Master of Fine Arts) program in Popular Fiction. It’s a two-year “low residency” MFA program, meaning it’s designed for people with full-time jobs. Stonecoast is one of the few programs in the country, low-residency or otherwise, with a concentration in Science Fiction writing and has many great sci-fi instructors on staff. I’ll be spending a few vacations in Maine, and one in Ireland as part of the program. MFA admissions are very competitive, and Stonecoast is a top ten low-residency program so I was thrilled to be admitted. I was also thrilled when one of the professors reading my application materials and writing samples–a writer I am familiar with, respect, and was a big draw of the Stonecoast program–wrote about my application, “I’ve genuinely not been so excited to read a new writer in years.” A lot to live up to! I’m developing a solid portfolio of short stories and the MFA thesis is a novel-length work. I’m keeping my day job, but this program will help me keep my writing progress on track and continue to develop new and ever higher quality material. With the MFA, which is a terminal degree as is a Ph.D. unlike most Masters degrees, I will also be qualified to teach college level writing courses. It would be pretty neat to be a physics professor who also taught sci-fi writing on occasion!
- I’ve made the semi-final rounds of the NASA Astronaut Candidate Class of 2017 selection. Here, NASA selects 120 people from the over 18,000 applications they received to interview in person in Houston. NASA is flying me from New Zealand to Houston, and I was able to clear with my coworker Amy and supervisor to leave the South Pole a bit earlier than planned to attend the interview (I make this sound simple, but it really involved many phone calls, meetings, and a lot of great support on the part of Amy and my supervisor at the South Pole Telescope). NASA interviews in groups of approximately 10, and I am in the very last group to be interviewed and on the very last day. I will probably be the person who has had to travel the longest/farthest for an Astronaut interview, ever. It depends on the weather–after all the preparations, it may be that planes simply cannot reach me. NASA will select approximately 50 people to go on to one final round of interviews and then select 8-14 people to become Astronaut Candidates. After that, it’s moving to Houston and two years of “basic training”, which includes amazing activities like wilderness survival, scuba diving, flying jets, Russian classes, and more, after which you are qualified to be assigned to space flight. It’s an extremely low chance I’ll be selected seeing the caliber of past selections and knowing a little about the current interview pool. I’ll make the most of the trip and am excited to get the chance to interview.
I also went about my daily life as the sun was rising during September. At the beginning of September, my free time was focused on my application to the Stonecoast program, including polishing my 15-page writing sample and two two-page admissions essays, as well as obtaining transcripts and filling out forms. Throughout September, I continued to enjoy my work out at the South Pole Telescope and working on software for the telescope from within the station. It was interesting seeing my walks to the telescope, which are about 2/3 of a mile, during the transition from darkness to light. It was certainly much quicker to walk. Temperatures also began to increase, slightly.
We had a ladies night and made earrings with material that you can print on and bake. The material is called Shrinky Dinks and I guess they are for kids, but even for adults, they are really cool!
On September 7, I got my first peek of the sun.
In ERT/Clinical Assistant training we practiced laboratory work by doing our bloodwork. Because of my living at altitude and physical fitness, my hematocrit level is actually high enough to qualify as doping in professional cycling. Good thing I’m not a professional cyclist.
I did my second electronic show at our “Open Mic Night” under the moniker “DJ Dark Sector.” I combine samples related to space (mostly from NASA, see a theme here?) with self-composed electronic music and real instruments. Here’s my gear setup (the portable version):
I started and finished a copper mug project in welding class. Copper is hard to weld!
I began to teach a “Programming for Beginners” course to members of the South Pole community, using the language Python. The course went three weeks and had a consistent attendance of 6 people. I had a lot of fun and learned even more about teaching programming to beginners.
I got another peek at the sun, a sliver:
In ERT/Clinical Assistant training to prepare for flights arriving, we studied the effects and treatment of altitude sickness including setting up special bags to deal with its effects. Here’s Amy in one of these bags as a demonstration:
The sun continued to rise
I found out I was admitted to the Stonecoast program. I got a call on September 22. I wasn’t expected them to call me, and didn’t recognize the phone number. I thought it might be the astronaut program, as I knew if I were invited to an interview I would likely hear by the end of September judging by the timeline NASA posted on their website. When I heard it was Stonecoast my first reaction was “there’s something missing in my application, oh no!”, but I was happy to hear instead that I had been admitted.
It got cloudy and very low visibility so we couldn’t even see the sunrise occur anymore . We had a sunrise dinner, which was luau themed. It was a bit ironic given the whiteout. The 2016 Pole Marker, machined by our machinist Matt, was revealed to our community. I can’t share photos as the official unveiling will be later on.
The sun became visible again and I had to change out my clear goggle attachments for sunglasses.
In late September I got a casual handwritten email from the “NASA-Astronaut Selection Office” saying to call them at my earliest convenience. I called and got an answering machine, then went to clinical assistant training thinking “is this the interview call!?” with one side of my brain and “why couldn’t they just email me to reject me” with the other. I stepped out at the end of training to check my voicemail and returned the call. After some pleasantries, the head of the office told me she had some good news, that they wanted to have me over to Houston to interview in person. I was delighted until I heard the dates: October 25-29, and that they were the last possible interview dates for this class. “But I’m at the South Pole,” I said. Which is very true. It seems they had not had a situation with a current South Pole winterover being selected to interview before. I said I could potentially, barely, make it and I would need a week to work on the logistics and get back to them.
The next week was spent in exactly those furious logistics, including working out a path to potentially interview remotely. Ultimately, my supervisor, the US Antarctic Program and my colleague Amy came together with me to decide that it was both possible and the best course of action for me to attend the interview in person, and we developed a plan to make it happen.
September 30th Amy and I built a lego set we had received as a mid-winter gift (a castle from the movie Frozen and a snowmobile, appropriately) while paying rapt attention to our Friday telecon.
After the telecon we had an Emergency Response Team drill. This drill happily took place inside the station, which involved less gearing up for everyone but the fire team. The drill simulated a fire in one of the wings of the station, replete with a smoke machine, coupled with a missing person.
That’s all for now. I’ll be sending out the October update, and continue to send out South Pole related highlights (plus a few astronaut related updates) through the end of the year. If everything goes well with weather and logistics, tomorrow I’ll be leaving the South Pole to fly to McMurdo to fly to Christchurch to fly to Auckland to fly to San Francisco to fly to Houston for my astronaut interview. That’s a lot of layovers over five days of travel and I am hoping for the best.
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