Just One Question

Physics professor Jim LaBelle is a rocket scientist. An expert on the Northern Lights, he builds experiments—carried into space by NASA rockets—that measure such phenomena as the earth's electric field and the density of particles that rockets encounter in space. Writer Andrea Sandasked him:

I don't use that expression too often. When I meet people—on airplanes, for example—and tell them about my job I don't usually tell them in quite that phrase. Sometimes in faculty meetings someone will say, 'That person's no rocket scientist,' and then they all look over at me and snicker. I think the rocket science expression

dates from the fifties and sixties, when people were much more in awe of the space program than they are today. It really seemed incredible that rockets happened at all, that you could make a rocket and make it go into orbit, that you could put a monkey or a person into orbit. I think that's where the expression comes from. People couldn't believe it—it seemed like magic. So the rocket scientist had to be the possessor of all this esoteric, complicated knowledge. I think that there's less awareness today. Of course, nowadays there are rocket launches every day that are much more dramatic than the early rocket launches of Sputnik and Explorer. But you don't read about them in the paper. Most are military launches and you don't hear much about them. Somewhere I have an article about them. It might be in this pile over here...."

James LaBelle really is a rocket scientist.

"What's it like to bea rocket scientist? "