CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- When the phone rings at Kennedy Space Center's public affairs office, the caller might just communicate with aliens. Or have psychic powers. Or see UFOs.
Whether they're hiding in a phone booth from perceived pursuers or trying to sell a space rock, the callers want to talk to NASA, the space agency, the ultimate authority in all things cosmic.
"Kennedy Space Center is NASA, as far as the whole world is concerned," said Diana Boles, a public affairs assistant who has spent more than 20 years at the KSC press site. A retired NASA employee, she works for KSC through contractor All Points Logistics.
Boles and colleague Linda Mullen, a NASA employee, field 150 to 200 calls on a normal day from all over the world. On launch day, they might get 1,000. No matter what the call sounds like, they're polite, and if they can give out information without compromising security, they will.
"They're the end of the line," said spokesman Bruce Buckingham. Once a call gets to them, they rarely pass the buck.
Though the assistants' primary job is to facilitate credentials and information for representatives of the media, most of their calls are from people looking for launch information, space publications and, sometimes, more unusual help.
People call because meteorites fell in their back yard. They want to know what to do with the space rocks. Some want to sell them. "They think NASA had something to do with it. They think NASA has all the answers," Boles said.
"We also get calls that think that NASA has something to do with tracking them," Boles said. "One woman called from a phone booth one day," saying people were after her because NASA had implanted a device in her head. The caller demanded action. "What can you do with a call like that?"
Other calls are similarly paranoid, in an "X-Files" kind of way.
"One call came in," Boles said, "and the guy said he wanted that telescope taken off the moon because it was tracking every move he was making. He wanted NASA to take the telescope off the moon. You know, you try to say there's no telescope on the moon that's tracking you, and you can talk to them to a certain point, and then you have to say, my phone's ringing, you know, and I have to go."
Mullen and Boles get plenty of calls about real phenomena, such as the twin sonic booms an orbiter makes as it lands at the space center.
"People want to sue us, because they have a crack in their ceiling or it woke them up at three in the morning," Mullen said.
Many people don't understand why the shuttle has to land at night sometimes, Buckingham said. "We go through the whole ordeal of orbital mechanics with every single person who calls." Shuttles have specific opportunities for leaving orbit that will get them to the KSC landing site. Orbiters aren't like airplanes; they have to glide in during good weather and can't fly around in circles, waiting for dawn.
Like cops and hospital workers, the assistants say the moon influences how wacky their calls get.
"And then we have the satellite caller, that the neighbor's stealing their satellite waves and getting free satellite," Mullen said. Sometimes, the woman calls three days in a row. "She'll get on a roll, and we'll look to see if there's a full moon."
One man called wanting his ashes flown in space. (A private company, Celestis, actually sells that service.)
There's an Irish guy who calls regularly from a Dublin pub to settle bar bets. He asks stuff like: "I'd like to know exactly how big is the sun?"
Another space fan will call several times a day, Boles said. "He's been calling for years, asking, 'Hey, what's going on? Did the astronauts make it to the pad? Who's doing commentary this time? Well, how's the weather down there?' And he'll just ask these real fast questions, and you've got phones ringing off the hook, serious calls you're trying to answer."
"I said, 'Well, what does your phone bill look like?' " Buckingham said, recounting a conversation with the frequent caller, who's from Ohio. "He says, 'I can tell you right now. It looks like, Cocoa Beach, Cocoa Beach, Cocoa Beach, Cocoa Beach, Cocoa Beach . . .' "
They get calls from psychics. These were especially common after the Challenger disaster, Boles said. "They saw it. They knew that it was going to happen, and they would be glad to help NASA out if they needed any help, because they're psychic, and they could tell."
Some call with prophecies or say they have foreseen an explosion and warn against a launch.
And then, of course, some people want NASA to identify some big, weird light in the sky. But KSC doesn't get a lot of UFO calls, Boles said.
Other people just want to help, especially when NASA has a problem with something like the cracked fuel-pipe liners in the shuttles. Sometimes, they have an invention. Those that might work, Buckingham said, are referred to the right office. As for other inventors, "you talk them through it -- and it's super glue. 'I've tried super glue on this. Have you tried super glue?' "
Other callers offer a different kind of aid.
"I had one where the guy said he had a plate in his head, a steel plate, and he could communicate with the aliens," Mullen said. "He just needed to talk to somebody high up in NASA about it, because he could go on the shuttle and be beneficial."
They get so many phone calls that they hate to answer the phone when they're at home, but they love the job.
"Someone asked me why I came back and how I could stand to work out here all these years," Boles said, "and I said, 'Because it's in my blood, and I love it.' "
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