This was my first time contributing to an exhibit—and the first time an idea of mine made it to the museum floor. The activity paralleled the Apollo 13 crisis, when astronaut Ken Mattingly and NASA engineers devised a way to restart the command module with limited power.

My biggest takeaway was that just because I see certain content as important doesn’t mean it will make the final cut. Budget and bandwidth constraints led to key omissions that, in my view, would have better framed the activity’s goal.