VGOM Adventure 4: “Red Badges and Rocket Science: VGOM Breaches the Shuttle’s Digital Vault”

VGOM, the early days

Location: Kennedy Space Center, 1991

Time: Just before lunch. Stakes: Astronomical.

The Florida sun beamed off the side of the Vehicle Assembly Building, that monolithic concrete cathedral to spaceflight. Its U.S. flag the size of a football field, fluttering proudly for all the shuttle-era engineers — and one soon-to-be-legend.

Enter VGOM.

Jet black hair? Check.

Clipboard? Check.

Network management station in a suspiciously unassuming briefcase? Triple check.

He didn’t arrive in a limo. He didn’t need a convoy.

VGOM rolled up in a government-issued sedan with a clearance badge hot off the laminator and an expression that said, “I know exactly what I’m doing, even if no one else does.”

The Gauntlet

Badge level after badge level.

Red, blue, holographic.

One checkpoint had a retinal scanner. Another had an armed guard who looked like he bench-pressed satellites.

Each gate let him deeper into the launchpad’s beating heart — until even civilian access was officially cut off. But VGOM? He wasn’t just a civilian. He was a walking security clearance with sideburns.

The Firing Room

Past the glass, launch engineers whispered, “No one goes in there without a full escort.”

VGOM popped open his portable management station with a quiet click, his fingers dancing across the keyboard like a jazz pianist in zero gravity.

Hubs. Ports. Configurations.

The network that helped launch the Shuttle was getting a VGOM-grade security upgrade.

Without a word, and much to the confusion of his armed escort, he dialed in port-level alarm thresholds.

Then he programmed auto shutoff routines that would make any intruder’s ethernet dreams die at the gate.

“No one’s popping a rogue laptop in here and getting a launch scrubbed,” he muttered, sipping from a thermos older than the Space Shuttle program itself.

The Legacy

He didn’t stay for the thank-yous.

He didn’t need a medal.

VGOM left the room tighter than a vacuum seal, and future missions flew safer because of it.

The only trace he left behind?

A tiny label on the switch that read:

“If you can read this, you’re too close. –VGOM”