NASA tweetup Day 1: Almost too much to handle

Monday, November 16, 2009

Post a comment | E-mail this story | Print

Launch Pad A at Kennedy Space Center, the day before the launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-129). (slideshow)

By Caitlin Kuleci Constantine
BayNews9.com web writer

Last year, after the Mars Phoenix Lander touched down on the surface of the Red Planet, a series of short, 140-character messages went out over the Internet.

"A sample of dirt is stuck in the funnel opening to the Chem Lab, so using my robotic arm I'll try to give it a careful nudge tomorrow."

"It's a bit stormy today. Not sure if these are dust or ice clouds, but the sky is more obscured & less sunlight is hitting my solar arrays."

And as the lander's on-board power system wound down:

"I should stay well-preserved in this cold. I'll be humankind's monument here for centuries, eons, until future explorers come for me ;-) "

"Take care of that beautiful blue marble out there in space, our home planet. I'll be keeping an eye from here. Space exploration FTW! "

By the time the final poignant tweet was transmitted - in binary code, no less - the Mars Phoenix Lander had amassed tens of thousands of followers on Twitter.

The Lander's Twitter account was the first step in what has evolved into NASA's full-on blitz on the Twitterverse. Now most of the astronauts tweet updates about their training, their mission preparations, and their work, even while they are in space. Each mission has a Twitter account, as does the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Kennedy and Johnson space centers and the Hubble telescope.

It all comes together in a symbiotic relationship of sorts. NASA gets to promote its product, which is arguably one of the coolest ones out there, while the space junkies who comprise the majority of their followers get the kind of detailed, day-to-day updates that most news organizations don't cover.

In recent months, NASA has set up something special for the most hardcore of the space junkies: Tweetups. A group of NASA Twitter followers would gather together to listen to astronauts and engineers from recent missions talk about their experiences, and then they would tweet about it so all their followers could take part vicariously. Once, they even held a Q&A session for the Twitter followers (some of whom have dubbed themselves Space Tweeps, complete with web site and cute embroidered polo shirts and everything) with astronauts in the International Space Station - while they were in the International Space Station.

More Information

It's kind of difficult to top an extraplanetary Q&A with in-orbit astronauts, but I think NASA may have done it this weekend, when they invited 100 Twitter followers to Kennedy Space Center to take part in a two-day Tweetup centered around the launch of the space shuttle Atlantis (STS-129).

The first day of the tweetup began at 8 a.m. on Sunday. We were given badges on lanyards and bags of goodies like mission pins and patches and posters, then ushered into the Atlas room in the Visitors Center. A dozen round tables were set up with chairs, and most of them were already filled with people tap-tap-tapping away at their laptops. Photographers and cameramen roamed throughout the area taking candid shots and video, while two big video cameras were set up to stream the meetings to the Internet and to NASA TV. Two projection screens hung on the walls at the front of the room, each of them displaying the live feed of the tweets posted using the #nasatweetup identifier.

The first part of the day was set aside for presentations. I expected the speakers to be informative; I didn't anticipate how funny they'd be. Everyone from Jon Cowart, who is the deputy mission manager for the Ares I-X rocket, to Bill Johnson, our bus tour guide, was clever and personable and bursting full of funny stories and quips. Whatever image a lay person has of NASA - I personally see Ed Harris in "Apollo 13," all brush cut and white vest and dour military precision, whenever I hear the phrase "mission control" - it should probably be revised to include a sense of humor.

Of course, it might have been difficult to tell that we were entertained, as nearly every single one of us was typing away on a phone or a laptop, taking pictures or shooting video. The speakers teased us regularly about how difficult it was to talk to us, as all they could see were the tops of our heads as we hunched over our keyboards. As astronaut Mike Massimino said, it's like talking to his teenage children.

After the presentations ended, we filed out of the room and into the lobby, where Massimino was taking part in a rock-star-style meet and greet, a tall, blue nucleus in the center of a frenzied atom of autograph-seeking, camera-wielding attendees. I chatted with him for a minute, and then spoke to JPL's Veronica McGregor, who sent out the tweets for the Mars Phoenix Lander. She had a chunk of aerogel, which is most often used for insulation but has also been used by NASA to capture bits of space dust, and she let me hold it. The block of aerogel was only slightly heavier and less transparent than air, which explains why it is sometimes known as "solid smoke." Then it was time for a quick lunch before piling onto a tour bus for the rest of the afternoon.

The lunar module from Apollo 14.

The first part of the tour was no different than the one paid for by KSC visitors. We checked out the International Space Station Center, which houses a life-size model of the ISS. The bathroom was about the size of a stall in a restroom, with straps and buckles to keep its occupant firmly strapped in place. Some thoughtful soul also included a lid for the toilet, a necessity upon which I will decline to elaborate further. The sleeping room was also about the size of a bathroom stall, with a retractable desk and light attached to one side. A sack hung from the other side, I suppose to keep the sleeping astronaut from bumping against the walls of the cubicle like a pinball.

Next, we stopped by the building that housed the Saturn V rocket. The rocket was fascinating because it was so massive and yet the module it carried was so tiny by comparison, like a songbird on the nose of an alligator. But what really caught my attention was a darkened chamber off to the side of the main area, which held a collection of artifacts from the Apollo missions. The kit used to repair spacesuits on the Apollo 13 mission was on display, as was a spacesuit helmet and a glove. The walls were lined with spacesuits that seemed, despite their great bulk, too flimsy to withstand the vacuum of space and the onslaught of deadly radiation. And yet they did just that.

The centerpiece of the room -- the Apollo 14 lunar module - was no less astonishing. It was about the size of a life raft and was the same color as a rusted tin can. I stared at the contraption, trying to imagine how lonely and terrifying it must have been to be crammed hip to shoulder into the module with two other people, far away from anything you recognized, from anyone you could call for help. The closest thing I could envision was scuba diving, which I had the opportunity to do last year. As I stood on the ocean bottom off the coast of Belize, it occurred to me that I was somewhere I had no business being, that I was seeing things no human eyes were meant to see, and that if something went wrong it would go terribly, fatally wrong. It was an idea affirmed by Massimino earlier that morning, who also compared space travel to scuba diving. He said that, when he saw the Earth from space, he thought it was a sight too beautiful for humans to comprehend and it nearly caused him to cry. (He didn't, he said, because who knows how the electronics in a spacesuit would react to tears?)

My moment of deep spiritual contemplation passed once we were back on the tour bus and heading out through Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge to Launch Pad A. The launch pad is not a normal part of the tour. The standard tour stops near the media viewing section, which is at least three miles away from the launch pad. (In fact, when it comes time to launch, everyone but the astronauts are cleared out of the three-mile radius surrounding the pad, as the shock wave from the blast is so strong that it would penetrate every opening in a person's body and rupture their organs. I tried to imagine how it must feel to be at the epicenter of a deadly tsunami of energy but my brain shut down from terror. My normally boundless empathy has its limits.) We drove on past those tour buses, all the way out to a strip of road just south of the launch pad.

And there it stood, tall and iconic and beautiful, a landmark to one of the loftiest ambitions humanity has ever undertaken. Seeing it up close like that was like seeing a movie star in person for the first time. It's so familiar that you would recognize its silhouette anywhere, but the TV images and photographs don't even begin to capture the immenseness, the complexity of it all. You realize that, as familiar as the launch pad is, you only know it in the most superficial of ways.

Our half-hour ticked by quickly, marked by the ceaseless clicking of cameras, and we piled back into the tour bus. The first day of the tweetup was coming to an end, and we were all happy, hungry and ready to take naps. We needed to rest up and prepare, because the biggest day - the launch - is still ahead. We would be back on Monday to see the launch pad in action.

Begin SlideShow
NASA2.jpg NASA3.jpg NASA4.jpg NASA5.jpg NASA6.jpg NASA7.jpg
End SlideShow

Be in the Know with Bay News 9 Now!

Get news, weather, and traffic alerts delivered directly to your computer desktop, e-mail, or cell phone with Bay News 9 Now.

Subscribe for free!

Valentine's Day

Do you have a romantic Valentine's Day story? Or a funny one? What about a nightmarish one? We want to hear them! Send them to us and we may use them in a story on BayNews9.com.