After all the drama of a few days I need to say how proud I am of my other half who just gave a talk at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC).
At the same venue where Elon Musk set the world alight with the news of his ambitious plans to get us all to Mars and be able to travel from London to New York in mere minutes, my Anna presented her Masters project to the same audience.
Anna has been all over the world this year for her Astro-Engineering Master’s degree that gave her an opportunity to work in Torino (Turin), Italy and Toulouse, France with a group of other outstanding students. I believe it was in partnership with the European Space Agency among others!? They worked on a project that saw them design, plan and present an ambitious alternative to the International Space Station that would revolve around the moon. Despite sitting in with them in humble Leicester while I worked on my own project, I still do not know exactly the scope of the project only that it was immense. They would just talk causally about moon craters and earth launches. It blew my earth-bound mind.
They have all worked incredibly hard to put this project together and they finished earlier this month, but due to some well written papers they were over in Adelaide, Australia to present this work. Anna was lucky enough to go present herself. She journeyed all there by herself only accompanied by the Chewbacca toy I bought that we affectionately call Bobbacca.
It isn’t a secret if you know Anna that she is a shy individual, who finds it hard to mingle at the best of times (she probably hates that I have written this). It takes real guts to travel half the way around the world, to do something you’re not that confident in and present to leading members in that industry (Elon bloody Musk was there!). And on all accounts, she knocked it out the park.
With everything that is going on, and me being a bit of a state recently, I wanted to publicly thank her for helping me with dealing with my Grandad and congratulate her on what is probably one the hardest things she has done in her life.
I will see her later next month, which is not early enough for my liking but before that she gets to tour Australia and then go to the Netherlands to give further talks. (She is even seeing Dragon Friends, a comedy D&D podcast we listen to), I’m jealous beyond belief.
I am truly punching above my weight (or mass, you science nerd!) and I thank you for being there for me all the while pushing yourself forward, the pic is of us being silly in Paris.
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