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Lisa Reed was a NASA training lead during Phase 1. She began her career at NASA in the training division at the Johnson Space Center, developing computer-based training programs before becoming a systems instructor. After that, she became a specialty instructor who trained astronauts on the orbiter docking system.
Part of her responsibilities in this position included training the first two cosmonauts who arrived at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, as part of the cooperative agreement between the U.S. and Russia. In her Oral History, Reed shared some of the communication challenges encountered with astronauts from foreign countries. The following is an example:
"We ran into a lot of problems with slang. We Americans like our slang. We don't realize we use it as much as we do. So they would stop us. I remember one day, I was in here teaching [STS-60 cosmonaut] Sergei [Krikalev]about the hydraulic system. I was explaining to him that when we come back from orbit, they'll start one [an auxiliary power unit] prior to the de-orbit burn. It's basically just to make everybody feel good that you have one running, because you don't really need it. Just so everybody knows you have at least one of these hydraulic systems running.
"The term that all of the instructors here use is 'warm fuzzy.' I remember he stopped, and he looked at me, and he goes, 'What is this "warm fuzzy"?' And I couldn't explain it to him, because I tried to separate the words. 'Warm,' to him, was like 'near hot.' Then 'fuzzy,' we got off into talking about teddy bears and fur and it just degraded from there. I don't think that he ever quite understood what a 'warm fuzzy' was. Maybe he does now. He's been over here for a while."
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Curator:
Kim Dismukes
Responsible NASA Official: John Ira Petty