Gordon Williams, Sunday Gleaner Writer
Jamaican-born Glenn Chin is a mission manager in charge of a multidisciplinary team of between 30 and 40 engineers at NASA, the U.S. space programme. - Contributed
To his family, Glenn Chin's passion for dismantling his new playthings and reassembling them did appear a bit odd at first. After all, it started when he was only four.
"From he was a youngster, as he got a toy, he never played with it at first," his mother Dorothy recalled about the third of her four sons nearly four decades later. "He pulled it down and tried to put it back together ... He never changed."
But for Jamaican-born Glenn, who migrated to the United States with his family as a teenager, even then, it was far more interesting trying to figure out how things worked.
"I used to fool around mechanical stuff like pulling down my bicycle and putting it back together," he says.
Fortunately, Chin's parents - Dorothy, then an Air Jamaica representative, and Reginald, a gas station owner and retired Jamaica Defence Force (reserves) officer - had seen Glenn's two older brothers, Reginaldo and Damian, show similar inclinations. The same would be true later for their youngest son Jason. They were all always curious to find out how things worked.
So Dorothy would have preferred that Glenn showed more interest in becoming a doctor or lawyer - and he would briefly toy with the idea of dentistry - neither she nor her husband interrupted his passion to work with his hands. It stimulated his mind and kept him busy and out of trouble.
Intriguing career
As it turned out, it spawned an intriguing career as well. The 43-year-old Chin is now a mission manager in charge of a multi-disciplinary team of between 30 and 40 engineers at National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the U.S. space programme. He is often assigned to several space missions at once and, on October 23, his latest pet project was taken into space aboard the shuttle Discovery. Glenn has responsibility for 'Harmony', a module which, when finally installed at the International Space Station, will offer six additional docking ports for a consortium of 13 space-travelling nations, mainly from Europe.
"It's like a six-entrance hallway that you can add rooms to," said Chin in describing the 31,500-pound, 24-foot long aluminum module recently. "It's actually the gateway to the international partners."
Discovery's crew will install 'Harmony' to the space station, making it the first expansion of the living and working space on the station in six years. The European Space Agency's Columbus laboratory is set to link to the platform in December. Japan's Kibo lab will be installed at another date. Several more missions will complete the station by 2010. The station is a US$100-billion project in which many countries are pitching in to prepare for future manned missions to Mars.
Chin has been involved with Harmony since the late 1990s, beginning with his role on a special team which offered NASA insight on the design and construction of the project. That job often sent him to Torino, Italy, where most of the module was built. He was briefly reassigned, but later returned to the project.
Chin first became a NASA mission manager in 2002 and has worked 16 missions since. Yet, his personal mission started long before then.
The Chin family lived in Barbican, St. Andrew, for about 20 years, where the four boys, including the youngest, Jason, grew up hardly bothering their parents.
Never had to worry
"You never had to worry about them," Dorothy said. "They were always happy if you left them alone."
That independence and self-motivation served the family well. A solid Jamaican background helped too. Her sons all attended St. Theresa's Prep and St. George's College, so when Dorothy transferred to Miami with Air Jamaica in 1979, Glenn had little problem tackling high school and community college in the U.S. He graduated from the University of Miami with a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering and eventually joined NASA, where he is currently stationed in Orlando, Florida, at the Kennedy Space Center, the launch site for Discovery. If Chin had had his way, he probably would have been piloting a space shuttle himself, but vision problems cut short that glamorous wish.
"You can't wear glasses," explained Dorothy. "So he couldn't become an astronaut."
"That dream did not last long," Chin admitted. "Everybody wants to fly, but not everybody is cut out for it."
The disappointment did not diminish his commitment to the space programme or make his current job less challenging. Chin's mother recalled her son being upset when the shuttle Challenger blew up shortly after take-off over two decades ago, killing everyone on board.
"It was a big impact," Dorothy said. "Glenn was shocked by the whole thing."
Maybe he was jolted into following a path of space travel. But no matter how far in space Chin's handiwork ends up, he remains rooted in his Jamaican upbringing.
"I left Jamaica when I was 16," he explained, "and I was fully formed. All that roots back to the Jamaican culture, the way I was raised. Just hard work and persistence."
Intimidated
His work has not gone unnoticed. The married father of a seven-year-old son has won several awards at NASA, including the prestigious Silver Snoopy given by NASA's Astronaut Corps. Only one per cent of NASA's total space programme employees get that award. Yet Chin is also interested in getting others involved in the programme as well. Too many people, especially immigrants from his homeland, become intimidated by the space programme and wrongly shelve their own dreams when they come to the U.S.
"Jamaicans think of NASA that 'oh, I'll never make it there'," he said. "A lot of people disqualify themselves before they even try."
But for now, his focus is on getting Harmony up and working in space. An it was far from his first mission, Chin still felt the special tingle as the launch date approached.
"It's an exhilarating feeling of excitement," he told NASA's website prior to October 23, "and we're all anxious to see Harmony get to the pad. I've never been a mission manager for any other mission that was as challenging."
Family members attended the launch. They too were thrilled.
"We're all so proud," Dorothy said.
Gordon Williams is a Jamaican journalist based in the United States.
