Chapter 38

Pregnant at last, and NASA walks out

After the holidays, I buried myself at work, and Liz ramped up her housebuilding project and added a furnishing project to the mix. Then, in mid-January, we had snow one evening, but it didn’t stick.

When I arrived home on January 24th, Liz was pacing around the living room.

“What’s going on, Liz? You look nervous.”

“I missed my period last week. So I went to my doctor this morning instead of the house. He examined me. He ran a test. Marty, I’m pregnant.”

I held my arms out, and my wife ran to me. I picked her up and spun her around; we’re going to have a baby.

It was the middle of March, and the three Steven’s amigos were in Uncle Bob’s SUV driving up I-95 to Bethesda, Maryland. We checked into our hotel before going out to dinner with Dad’s insider trading friend. Dad and Elon’s stories had Uncle Bob and me falling out of our chairs with laughter. After we returned to our rooms, I’m sure Dad and Uncle Bob went straight to bed, but I set up writing hypothetical questions in my new notebook and then answering every question.

The symposium started after a buffet breakfast was served, and Lockheed Martin’s top engineer was the event host. It was apparent right off the bat that NASA was trying to block everything that took away any of its glory. Almost everyone was sitting quietly, trying to stay awake, when the head of NASA put his foot in his mouth.

“In my opinion, which is the opinion of many of our supporters in Congress, NASA should be in charge of any venture into space, by any private or public, company or corporation, residing in the United States. Therefore, one of our sponsors in the house and Senate will be introducing...”

My uncle jumped up, “Now, hold on just a minute. NASA relies on private companies to get their satellites and astronauts into space. Let’s go in the opposite direction. How about if my friends in this room start poaching all the astronauts, engineers, and technicians working for NASA who are worth a shit.”

“Now, just one minute, I resent...”

“The gentleman from NASA is interrupting Mr. Stevens, and if he doesn’t sit down, they can fly their astronauts to the ISS on an ICBM.”

It got real quiet quick; they’re scared of Elon.

“Thank you, my friend. We could hold job fairs in Texas, California, and Florida to interview the ones who can’t wait to retire so they can escape the boredom of training and nothing else. Take away their people, and NASA becomes a chapter in the history books. As for Senators dumb and dumber, who have a lot of NASA facilities in their state; they’ll have to worry about feeding the hungry, fixing the roads, and cleaning up the air and water in their fine state that can’t keep the electricity turned on in the winter.”

Way to go, Uncle Bob.

As he sat down, my dad smacked him on his back as my uncle said, “Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into, Marty.”

Me! I was minding my own business.

As I sat down, the NASA guy fell back in his chair, clutching his chest, and the politicians were screaming for an investigation. The yelling and finger-pointing continued until lunchtime, and a steady stream of people walked up to my uncle, slapping on the back or shaking his hand.

There were a lot of empty chairs for the afternoon session that were filled in the morning session by the thirty-man delegation from NASA and twelve members of Congress. The only members of Congress still in attendance were from Maryland and Virginia.

The host reconvened the conference at 1 PM and started with a couple of jokes before getting serious, “Now I’ve known Bob Stevens a long time, and I’m sure his remarks were not intended to offend the gentleman from NASA. Bob spoke the truth; there are serious problems with NASA and the United States government trying to control who gets to go into space, and once we get there, what should they allow the private sector to do. His nephew Marty has written a controversial paper about the future of crewed and crewless space exploration, and I’d like to ask him to come up and say a few words to start the discussion.”