The nerve centre for American human spaceflight is NASA’s Mission Control Centre in the Johnson Space Centre, Houston.
It has been described as something like an emergency call centre or an air-traffic control room with several computer displays, clocks and a large centre screen showing precisely where a spacecraft is over Earth.
Mission Control is the most important room in the building and its function is to continuously and effectively monitor and control crew safety, vehicle health and mission success. They’re a last line of defence against losing astronauts. It’s the ultimate in risk management.
It’s the place where there is no panic button because being in control of the mission is everything.
This means Mission Control has to be a serene place, calm, orderly, focused and on the ball.
A bit like our own Mission Control Centre – our mind.
We have to be keep that same level of grounded control in our day-to-day challenges. And there are many.
Some challenges we get given, some happen to us and then there are those we select ourselves.
Either way, we have strive to control what we can. We therefore need to have the ability to take charge in an emergency and to plan for unforeseen events.
You’re at the centre of important mind blowing events and part of history – your own!
In a cancer situation, the stakes couldn’t be higher and getting ‘the news’ induces fear.
But this isn’t the time to go running down the corridor as if your hair is on fire.
We have to gather information and intelligence to help us understand more.
Getting a diagnosis means you don’t really take much in beyond hearing the word cancer.
This is where teamwork comes into its own and why we must always have someone with us when meeting a doctor. A third party can absorb what we can’t. A third party can find out what we know about the situation, what we don’t and what can be done.
Just like NASA’s real Mission Control Centre, we have to keep our own control centre focused on the mission (to control cancer) by focusing on the facts, asking specific questions and working as calmly as we can to address the risks.
Keeping our own mission control as a serene space might be reaching for the skies but we have to at least try for our own sanity.
Weighing up the treatment options and making informed decisions is key and that demands a clear head. It will also demand taking a few risks in order to stay alive.
Living is a risky business. Cancer increases the risk tenfold. But that’s why we are here, to evolve and to keep on taking risks.
Risk is our business. That’s why we are here!
Houston, we have a video to watch. The mission is a go!