Most Interesting Person I've Ever Met

I've been lucky. My job has allowed me the opportunity to meet and work with some pretty cool people. Famous people. Icons.

But the person who most impressed me was a five foot nothing engineer in the engine shop at Kennedy Space Center. His responsibility was a facility that serviced engines, just like some Mercedes dealer. Except the engines that filled the service bays in his shop could suck enough fuel every few seconds to empty an Olympic-size swimming pool. Space Shuttle Main Engines. If something goes wrong in the Mercedes shop, your S class may end up on the side of the freeway. If something goes wrong in his shop, astronauts go BOOM.

I was at NASA researching a film project for Fox, and they provided us access to their top engineers. The men and women who actually make rockets fly and bring astronauts home safe. During this I was posing a question to the engineers, basically asking them if something would be possible--turning a Shuttle around in 72 hours for an emergency flight to rescue crew members on the International Space Station.

All we heard was no. No because of this, because of that, because this rule said no, because that's impossible. But the overriding reason was this--you can't recondition the main engines that fast. It takes six weeks minimum. Bummer. There goes realism in the project.

Then we got a tour of the engine shop. The guy in charge showed us around, and just for kicks I told him what the engineers above him had told us. His reaction.

Bull^&$#.

Then he proceeded to tell and show me over the next hour just how he would make it happen. He described how he'd jackhammer ten ton machines from their mountings and drag them out to work on the shuttle outside. He said that he would do whatever it took to save the lives of astronauts 'up there'.

And I believed him.

The next day when we met the engineers again, I told them what their engine guy had said. Their reaction? 'Well, sure, yeah, I guess we could do that. That would probably work.'

Engine shop guy, short, bald, and geeky, blows Dos Equis guy outta the water.