Related Posts:Thanks, Mom and Dad, for intro­duc­ing me to space13 days until the NASA twee­t­upThe year of adven­ture con­tin­uesVideo of this morning’s win­ter sol­stice lunar eclipsePerseid Fail

Posts tagged: STS-133

STS-133 NASA Tweetup

November 23, 2010, 10:25 am | View Comments

(Photo credit: NASA/Paul E. Alers)

I started writ­ing about the NASA Tweetup nearly a dozen times now. I’m hav­ing trou­ble encap­su­lat­ing exactly how pro­found of an expe­ri­ence it was, maybe because I’m still wrap­ping my head around it.

In the weeks lead­ing up, a group of very orga­nized peo­ple coor­di­nated the rental of a vaca­tion house, which we dubbed the Big House. The enthu­si­asm peo­ple had in the Google group and on Twit­ter was infec­tious. I didn’t know any­one, but I was excited to dive in and meet them. Within a mat­ter of hours of arriv­ing, we were fam­ily. These are new friends I will keep for the rest of my life.

At Kennedy Space Cen­ter, we saw things that aren’t nor­mally avail­able to the pub­lic. The launch was delayed mul­ti­ple times, and then even­tu­ally scrubbed, but Stephanie Schier­holz, the tweetup orga­nizer and our per­sonal superhero/rockstar, coor­di­nated extra activ­i­ties and more unfor­get­table moments than we could have dreamed. What was orig­i­nally a three-day trip was extended into a week-long expe­ri­ence that, for lack of a bet­ter term, changed my life. We saw the inside of the Vehi­cle Assem­bly Build­ing. We vis­ited the launch­pad at sun­set. We explored the Kennedy Space Cen­ter vis­i­tor cen­ter at leisure and rode the Shut­tle Launch Expe­ri­ence mul­ti­ple times. At the Big House, we stayed up late, forged new rela­tion­ships, played music, laughed harder than any of us had laughed in a long time, ate, drank, and basked in the pres­ence of some of the most cre­ative, smart, fas­ci­nat­ing peo­ple I had ever met.

I am work­ing on a much longer post about the whole week, but in the mean­time, my friends Raam and Tal­lu­lah both wrote incred­i­bly stir­ring pieces that express the spirit of the expe­ri­ence much bet­ter than I can right now. It’s absolutely required read­ing. We also had no short­age of pho­tog­ra­phers on hand, so be sure to check out my Flickr set as well as the tweetup group.

As of right now, NASA plans to launch Dis­cov­ery no ear­lier than 2:52 a.m. on Decem­ber 3. Stephanie informed us that our badges will allow us into the press area dur­ing this new launch win­dow. (See? She’s still our super­hero.) So, pre­sented with this aston­ish­ing oppor­tu­nity, I will head back down to the Space Coast next week. There’s no way I could miss this.

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By Gavin St. Ours Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Thanks, Mom and Dad, for introducing me to space

October 27, 2010, 5:22 pm | View Comments

I owe a lot of my inter­est in sci­ence and space explo­ration to my par­ents. Grow­ing up, my Dad took me on field trips to explore plan­ets and stars through tele­scopes in the dead of win­ter. My first up-close look at the Moon knocked my socks off. We put down blan­kets in the back­yard and counted mete­ors dur­ing show­ers. My par­ents bought sub­scrip­tions for me to kids’ sci­ence and space mag­a­zines, and I once got to spend a sum­mer at the the Mary­land Sci­ence Center’s plan­e­tar­ium in Baltimore.

A few years ago, when Mars and the Earth were closer to each other than they’d ever be in our life­times, my dad and I gazed at the Mar­t­ian polar ice caps through his tele­scope. It was stunning.

Just this past May, I was lucky enough to road trip down to Florida with my sis­ter and father to watch my first-ever space shut­tle launch, the launch of Space Shut­tle Atlantis, STS-132. Right now, I’m beside myself with excite­ment for the NASA Tweetup this weekend.

I’m so thank­ful that my par­ents intro­duced me to space at a young age. Just a few min­utes ago, I got this email from my dad:

The date for the next launch draws near and I’m excited even tho I’m not going! So I thought you might like to see this pic of your space shut­tle toy that I found clean­ing up today. Still in great work­ing con­di­tion!
0:-)

I totally remem­ber this toy. It was one of my favorites. Right now, I kind of want to go home and play with it.

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By Gavin St. Ours Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

13 days until the NASA tweetup

October 18, 2010, 9:14 pm | View Comments

This after­noon, NASA issued a press release about the tweetup. This just got real! Here’s an excerpt:

Par­tic­i­pants at the NASA Tweetup on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 will tour Kennedy and meet with shut­tle tech­ni­cians, man­agers, engi­neers and astro­nauts. They also will get a demon­stra­tion of Robo­naut, a human-like robot sim­i­lar to the one that will be deliv­ered to the space sta­tion with this mis­sion. The Tweetup cul­mi­nates with the view­ing of the shut­tle launch.

Robo­naut is seri­ously cool. It looks like the miss­ing mem­ber of Daft Punk.

As you can imag­ine, my Twit­ter and Flickr streams will be filled with all the NASA and shut­tle launch good­ness your poor eyes can stand. With a lit­tle luck, I’ll pick up that shiny new cam­era I’ve had my eye on (or maybe a rich bene­fac­tor will anony­mously gift it to me!) and cap­ture some slick video of the event.

Of course, no mat­ter how I cap­ture or doc­u­ment this expe­ri­ence, all the best stuff will end up right here on this blog, too.

13 days! I’m so excited!

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By Gavin St. Ours Tags: , , ,