Character Sketch

It was August 17th 1980; the “Viking 1” mission to Mars was being shut down after being in Mars’s orbit for two years longer than expected.
Memories of working on the Viking flooded my mind. My head was swimming with the thought that I, Ralph Proud JR, had been a part of this major success. I sat deep in my chair, falling back seven years to when I had worked on it. Though I wasn’t able to see the fire burst from the underside of the launcher as it pierced the stratosphere before it completed its journey to the red planet about a year later, I still had the knowledge that I helped it on its way to completing the grand purpose for this piece of work. I worked for two years, putting who knows how many hours of labor for the mission, and so much has been learned, and can be learned from it.
I worked on the Central Command System (CCS); I had programmed this part of the Viking. A new force began to build in my chest, it was swelling as if there had been a gargantuan mosquito that bit me, going straight for the heart, but because of its not actually existing, there was no itch. Without the CCS the orbiter part of the Viking would not have known what to do, it would have just hung there in space, a million dollar paper weight, it wouldn’t have moved, wouldn’t have sent any data back to earth, wouldn’t have done any scanning, wouldn’t have dropped the Lander part either. But this was not an issue as I had done my job properly and it functioned just as it was expected to.
It had been built so well that it was able to go two years longer than we thought it would, during which time Mars was behind the sun relative to the Earth, and we were able to learn about the sun’s atmosphere. Amazing how you can discover things when you aren’t trying to, or are looking for something else.
I was astonished at my own capabilities, what the team was able to accomplish, what we learned and what we can learn because of this one mission. I let it all sink in to me as I made my way back into the present. It truly was an incredible feeling, that my work has made an impact on science, possibly even humanity. I didn’t expect a Nobel Prize, and I didn’t get one either, it would have been too much anyway.
I was more than content with my life, what I did was in the past, I must now look to what I can do in the future. Success is wonderful, but what can I use from this experience to make my next work even better? This is the ultimate question that I ask myself, and challenge my children with. There is no such thing as perfection, so how could it be better?