8,350 km for a Shuttle Launch. Now I Sleep Through Them.

A dream that comes true becomes normal. A study out this week says that is not the loss it sounds like, if you let it buy you something.

By Peter Plötner. Aerospace engineer and Wayfinder Life Coach. More about Peter →

Avio's Vega C lifted off at 10:21 PM on Monday. I usually watch from the beach 5 minutes from my house, or the launch wakes me up. This time I slept through the whole thing.

In 2010 I flew 8,350 km to see one.

In the morning I remembered it was planned and was sure it had been pushed. I would have woken up. One of us would have. Then I checked: it flew, and both satellites are in orbit and healthy.

Munich to Orlando, 2010

Nine of us, all students. Plane tickets from Munich to Orlando by way of Atlanta, a rental car, motels. For me it was a lot of money at the time. The volcano in Iceland was still throwing ash into the sky that spring, so our flight was delayed, and we were happy it was not cancelled.

Our professor, Ulrich Walter, had flown on Columbia in 1993. He got us VIP tickets: the viewing site next to the building where the Saturn V lies, 6 km from the pad. On May 14, 2010, at 2:20 in the afternoon, Atlantis lifted off from pad 39A. The light came first. About 18 seconds later the sound of the boosters arrived, that deep rumbling. I will never forget it. To this day, at every rocket launch or air show, that deep rumbling fills me with joy.

Sixteen years later I live where the rockets leave. Several launches a year, a short walk to the beach. And on Monday my body picked sleep over one of them, without asking me.

The dream became normal

That is what happens to every dream that comes true. The joy does not go away. Mine has not; the rumbling still does it every time. What changes is how rare the thing is. The first time, you would cross an ocean for it. By the time it is a normal part of your year, it is Monday night and you have work in the morning. Nobody warns you, and I am not sure a warning would help.

If you are a technical founder, you know this from the other side. The company was your Shuttle launch once. You would have flown anywhere for the first customer, the first piece of hardware that worked. Now it happens several times a year, and it has a weekly meeting.

There are two ways to read that. One: you lost something and should fight to get it back. Two: the normal is what getting there costs, and it also buys you something. On Monday it bought me a night of sleep. The student in 2010 could not have slept through Atlantis. He also could not have lived that way for 16 years.

What went up while I slept

Two satellites, both built to look after the planet. Sentinel-3C, 1,143 kg, watches the oceans: the temperature of the surface, the color of the water, smoke in the air, the heat coming off wildfires. FLEX, 397 kg, watches plants, and its reading is the strange one. When a leaf takes in sunlight, most of the energy goes into making sugar. A tiny fraction leaks back out as light, in red and far-red, too faint and too deep into the red for a human eye. Every plant on Earth glows like this all day. Nobody has ever seen it.

The glow changes when the plant is in trouble. A dry spell or a pest shows up in the glow before it shows up in the leaf. FLEX will read it from about 820 km up, in squares 300 meters on a side, for the whole planet, every 27 days.

So a rocket went up at night to read a signal that says how a living thing is really doing before it looks bad. Hold that thought.

The study that came out the same week

Bassam Khoury and Rodrigo Vergara at McGill University asked 1,286 Canadian adults how much compassion they feel, and act on, in three directions: for other people, for animals, and for themselves. They also measured stress, anxiety, depression, how well people handle hard feelings, and well-being. The paper is in Personality and Individual Differences this month.

Six patterns came out. The people doing best on every measure were high in all three directions. The ones doing worse were high on others or animals and low on themselves. Caring a lot, with yourself left out of it, went with more anxiety, more depression, and lower well-being.

Khoury's own list of who this fits: “caregivers, educators, health professionals, parents and activists.” People who “may be very caring toward others while being harsh or neglectful toward themselves.” If you run a company, add yourself. The team's pay, the customer's problem, the money someone trusted you with: care for others is the job.

One more finding, easy to miss. 213 of the people answered again 3 months later. Their profile had not moved. The imbalance does not fix itself with time.

This is one survey, in one country, with more women than men answering, and it shows a link, not a cause. What it does is put a number on something doctors and coaches have said from experience for a long time.

Reading your own glow

A plant does not decide to glow. The glow is what leaks out when the light coming in is more than the plant can use. It is honest because nobody is choosing it. A leaf can look fine for a while and the glow already says otherwise.

You have a version of this. Something in you changes before you look tired to anyone else. For some people it is answers getting shorter. For some it is the walk that stops happening, or the meal that turns into a coffee. Almost nobody points an instrument at it, for the same reason the study found: your attention is aimed outward, at the people you look after.

Khoury: “Self-compassion may help people regulate difficult emotions, reduce self-criticism and create a sense of inner safety.” He goes on: it “is not selfish or self-indulgent; it is a foundation for sustainable care for others.”

Monday night was that reading, taken by my body. You sleep through the loudest thing in your world when your body has filed it as safe. I did not pick that. It moved before I noticed it, like the glow.

One question, once a week

What I take from nine students, two satellites and 1,286 people is one small practice, and it is not a routine. It is a question. Once a week, ask: what changed in me first, before anyone could see it? Then treat the answer the way FLEX treats the glow. Information about how the plant is doing. Not a verdict on the plant. That is most of what the study measured as self-compassion: noticing, and not being harsh about what you notice.

The rocket did not need me awake to fly. The student needed to see Atlantis, and he went. The man 16 years later needed sleep, and he got it. The next one I will most likely watch from the beach, and the rumbling will do what it always does. Your company will run for one night without you watching it, too.

What did you once travel a long way for that now happens without you watching?

Frequently asked questions

What did Vega C launch on September 14, 2026?

Avio's Vega C (flight VV30) lifted off from the European spaceport in French Guiana at 10:21 PM local time with two Earth-observation satellites: Copernicus Sentinel-3C, which watches oceans, land, ice and the atmosphere, and ESA's FLEX, which measures plant fluorescence. Both reached an orbit about 820 km up and are healthy.

What was STS-132?

Space Shuttle Atlantis's mission to the International Space Station, launched May 14, 2010, at 2:20 PM from pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center, carrying the Russian Rassvet module. At the time it was planned as Atlantis's final flight; one more was added in 2011.

What does FLEX actually measure?

A faint red and far-red glow that every plant gives off in sunlight, invisible to the eye. It is a direct readout of photosynthesis, and it changes when a plant is stressed by drought, poor soil or pests before the leaves show it. FLEX maps it in 300-meter squares across the whole planet every 27 days.

What did the McGill compassion study find?

Among 1,286 Canadian adults, people high in compassion for others, animals and themselves reported the lowest anxiety and depression and the highest well-being. People high in compassion for others or animals but low in self-compassion reported poorer mental health. The profiles were stable over 3 months. The study shows a link, not a cause.

How do I notice my own early signal?

Ask one question once a week: what changed in me first, before anyone else could see it? Shorter answers, a skipped walk, a meal that became a coffee. Treat the answer as information about how you are doing, not as a judgment.

One thing that closes soon. I just earned my certification as a Wayfinder coach, and to mark it I am giving away my full 3 month coaching package to 1 person, free. It is the same package paying clients get: a session every 2 weeks, support in between by message or voice, and the method itself, so you can run it again on your own later. No homework. I read every application myself and they close on September 20. If you are the one looking after everyone else, the application is here and takes about 5 minutes.

Two companions: Burnout Is Not a Bug. It's a Spec Mismatch. on the requirement nobody wrote down, and The Rocket Is Not the Point on what happens in my head when I do watch. If you want a first reading on which requirements you are running somebody else's version of, the Spec Check is 4 questions and takes about a minute.

Your space, free

No matter where you start, it walks with you: find what you really want, and be at peace and in joy on the way. Your unfair advantage.