Ray Rivas
2016-10-31
Building 7 is where I come to work every day and I have fun, and get stressed out-- but it's a fun stress, because you know your main goal is to put astronauts in vacuum chambers and test their suits out. Test the integrity and make sure that their training is there and make sure the facility is where it's supposed be as far as breathing air, oxygen, nitrogen, that the test facility is test-ready all the time. It’s challenging all of that-- doing the maintenance. Some days we're working on bicycles or mopping or sweeping, and the next day we've got a crew member in a vacuum chamber and we're testing. My life has made this circle where it came from being a janitor to a technician to a lead, a responsible person, so every time you see a flight go up, or a crew member comes back from space or he's spinning up there or he's training, you're like, "Wow. I had a little part of that," you know? So it's neat. I feel grateful that I did a little something.