The other days of the Tweetup
Well, this one got extremely long, so I'm putting it behind a cut. Enjoy! Wednesday Sept. 7
This is officially Day One of the tweetup. As I mentioned in the previous entry the DH crew decided to split into two groups. One was an early group, so that James could get his badge and not have to wait in a super long line. I chose the early group, besides, who was going to be able to sleep in when the Tweetup was going to be starting in just a couple hours! We got to the badging location early , and there weren’t a lot of people there, so it took James only a couple of minutes to get everything. After he got his stuff, we had time to go get breakfast, so we asked for a place to go for breakfast and headed off. It was the three of us, plus one other person who was wandering around and wanted to join us for breakfast. I cannot remember his name, but I remember his twitter account. We missed the turn for our original intent, and so ended up eating at McDonalds in Titusville. Nothing special there, but on the way back to the Visitor Center, we saw some dolphins. I was super excited because dolphins are not an animal that you can see in Colorado. I also saw some floating profiles of ‘gators, but that wasn’t nearly as exciting to me as the dolphins were.
When we got back to the Visitor’s Center, we had just a couple minutes to stand around, talking to people, before they opened the gates and let us into the room we would be using for the non-tour portion of the day. Everyone got settled in their own spot, and the Tweetup officially started!
The first order of business was to do introductions. With 150 tweetup participants and about 5 or 6 staff members, it was going to take a long time, if people didn’t keep it short. The request was that everyone would introduce themselves, by saying their name, and their twitter handle, where they are from and one interesting fact about themselves, if they wanted to. On the schedule, it was listed that we would have 50 minutes to get through everyone. We ended approximately 50 minutes later. I was pretty impressed with the efficiency. No one seemed long winded when they said their introduction. Some people were funny, but overall, it was just really neat to learn where everyone was from, and put more faces to names, or hear about people that we hadn’t been following yet, and wanted to start doing so. It also helped to connect some of the facebook people to a twitter handle. After everyone had said their introduction, it was time to get on the buses and head out for the morning tours.
There were four buses. If my memory serves me, I was on bus 3. I’m 99% sure that is correct, but that was not one of the important parts of the tweetup, so it didn’t stick with me. Our tour was going to take us to the military side of Cape Canaveral Base, and the Kennedy Space Center side. We started on the military side, and went first to Pad 41. This is the launchpad from where Juno launched, and I believe the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) will be launching from that pad as well. We had to stand behind a fence, and look from a distance, so there really isn’t much more to talk about. I had forgotten my mosquito repellant so I tried to hide in the middle of the group. I think I only got one bite, and I did my best not to scratch it in the beginning and so it was never an itchy issue for me.
After that, we went to SLC-17 which is where the Delta II was going to launch from, and where GRAIL was. The white room was surrounding the area where GRAIL was, so we didn’t really get to see much, except the outline of the Delta II. The gantry would be rolling back at 11pm that night in preparation for launch. While we were there, reporters and some other people were setting up cameras to capture different angles of the launch.
Throughout the tour, I continued to look for wildlife. I saw plenty of ‘gator backs, and some more dolphins. Of course, it was always the tail end of the dolphin, or the dorsal fin, but still neat.
The next stop on our tour was the Vehicle Assembly Building, or VAB. For those of you readers that don’t know what the VAB is, it’s where the Saturn V was assembled, and where the Space Shuttle was loaded onto the External Tank and the Solid Rocket Boosters. It is a -large- building. As we walked inside the tour guide gave us some background on how the vehicles were assembled. I listened but I was fascinated by all of the metal and just how big it was. And we weren’t even in the high bays. (I have seen a Saturn V, layed out horizontally, but that never really had any meaning to me, until I saw the VAB and got a sense of just how big this would be. There were banners for a lot of the shuttle flights. “We’re behind you [Endeavour, Atlantis, Discovery, Challenger, Columbia]” I took a couple pictures of the banners, they had signatures on them, and I assume the signatures were all the people who worked on that mission.
During the whole day, people are tweeting and facebooking. Because I have a smart phone, I was able to keep up with some of it. I could see what others were saying, and also post my own thoughts. We had been told that we might get to see a Shuttle, but no one was sure which one. Because we saw the VAB third, I had seen, from others that had been to the VAB, that we would be getting to see Endeavour. We walked to the back, and there she was. I referred to her as being in a state of undress, since that’s pretty much what it was, Endeavour is being prepped to be located, I think in California. There was a group picture of our bus group, in front of Endeavour, and then we headed out. I was still in awe over seeing a Shuttle up close, but also being in the VAB. ((I later learned, that getting to go inside the VAB is a very special thing, and I feel so fortunate to have been able to go inside))
The final stop was the countdown clock, which is maybe a half mile from the VAB. We were running behind, and our tourguide asked if we really wanted to stop at the clock, because it wasn’t running, so there wasn’t really much to see. Half the bus had an emphatic yes, so we stopped and the guide urged us to make it only about 5 minutes. I got a glimpse of Pad 39A and 39B from where we were, but took no pictures. ((This is where the Shuttles launched from)) Instead, I turned around, and took a couple more pictures of the VAB, and then got back in the bus. Since it wasn’t running, and it was hot and humid, and mosquito-y outside, I was happy to get back on the bus.
As we headed back to the Visitor’s Center, we passed by the front of Launch Control Center, or LCC, and then drove around a crawler. The crawler is this vehicle that would ferry the prepared shuttle from the VAB to the launch pad. It’s a distance of about 4 miles, and the crawler would do it in about 8 hours. ((So a very slow moving vehicle)) It moved slowly because it was moving a heavy load, and because slower is more stable. After seeing that, we drove by a 50 year old eagle nest. ((KSC and JSC are built on nature preserves and so they deal closely with wildlife.)) As I said, this eagle nest was 50 years old, so it had been around for quite awhile.
Once we got back to the Visitor Center, we were dismissed for lunch. People could eat at the Visitor Center, or go out somewhere else. The group I was with, decided to eat at the Visitor Center, so we didn’t have to worry about finding a parking spot, or waiting around for the gate to be opened. ((We got to sneak in a side gate, instead of having to go through the entrance))
After lunch, we were going to have an afternoon of lectures, so everyone had their laptops or tablet devices to that they could use social media during the speakers presentations. This is the only event I know of, where it is okay not to be engaging the speaker, but being on your electronic device. We had been promised a wi-fi connection to use for the afternoon, but when we returned from lunch, the wi-fi was not working. Eventually, only 60 or so people were unable to get on the wi-fi. ((I was one of those people, but since I had a smart phone, I could just use that. There were other people that were unable to do anything during the speaker presentations because they only had a laptop and the laptop wasn’t able to connect to the wi-fi. We found out, later in the afternoon, that there had been a request put in for another subnet, but they were unsure of who needed to approve the measure to get the additional subnet. That’s government! After that, we found out that the IT people had never given out enough IP addresses for all 150 people anyway. We were baffled by how the IT people decided to provide that little of space for an event that is all about social media, but oh well. Also, the matter was resolved after the event ended for the day.))
Afternoon Lectures
The afternoon event was going to be livestreamed, so there were cameras and lights set up all around the room to make sure that people watching online could see the speakers and the presentation slides. The lights were somewhat distracting to us, because we couldn’t see the slides, but we were assured that all the slides would be put up online for us to view.
The first speaker was Charles Bolden, the head of NASA. He was a very engaging speaker, and seemed very personable and down to Earth. I will admit here and now, that my opinion of him, coming in to the event was colored by JSC friends who complained about him. I hadn’t done any research, and I kept an open mind while he talked and I was very impressed. I liked him a lot, and the one thing that stuck with me about him was “I don’t know everything going on at NASA, and as an administrator, I shouldn’t.” I’m not sure why that sticks with me, but it really sticks with me, and I like it. When he finished talking with us, he mentioned that he had a special guest speaker, and introduced Nichelle Nichols.
For those of you who don’t know who she is, she was on the original Star Trek series, and she broke a lot of barries, not only for women, but for people of color and minorities. She told us a story about how she got involved with NASA. I was impressed with her, her story, what she has overcome, and how she helped push boundaries. The quote that stuck with me was “Nothing is impossible.” She said something else, that I really liked, but I was in the process of making a tweet, and don’t have the quote handy. I want to say it was something along the lines of “If you can dream it, you can be it, you can do it” But I don’t think that’s correct. Hopefully someone will read this that does remember the quote and share it with the rest of my readers.
I’m going to apologize now, to all of the people that spoke, they shared some awesome things, and I am grateful for the time they gave us, but I don’t have quotes, or really a lot of information about everyone.
The next speaker was NASA Jim. He was funny, amusing, fun, and seriously loves his job. He talked about keeping the conversation going, sharing with everyone what NASA does, and how important math is. “Math is important, no matter what you’re doing.”
After that was Maria Zuber, the principal investigator for GRAIL, from MIT. She talked about the technical mission for GRAIL, and what we assume about the moon, and how much we don’t know. ((Some of the Apollo astronauts brought back stuff from the moon and we are STILL analyzing it and learning things from it.))
After Maria, was Sami Asmar, the Deputy Project scientist for GRAIL, from JPL. I don’t remember anything special about what he said, except that he was relieved that Maria went first because she answered the hard questions.
Next we had a couple speakers from Sally Ride Science, to talk about MoonKAM. MoonKAM is a project where school classrooms and can sign up, and eventually tell the GRAIL twins (if I didn’t mention it before, GRAIL is twin vehicles) were to go and what to take a picture of, and then get those pictures back. They talked all about how people can get involved and encouraged us to share information about MoonKAM to everyone. For my own part, I wear the MoonKAM bracelet we were given, all the time, in hopes that someone will ask me about it, and I can talk about the awesome project that it will be.
At this point, we had a break, and the staffers tried to fix our wi-fi woes. ((It became a joke amongst people that we should have asked Bolden to approve the subnet))
After the break, we had Doug Ellison talk to us about “Eyes on the Solar System” It’s this awesome software, that some of us called Google Earth for the Universe. You can look at the universe from 1950-2050. There’s pictures of different planets, and solar systems, you can get information on where Juno is, or some of the other vehicles out there. When more information is available, the twin GRAIL vehicles will be viewable too. The software is still in Beta testing, and we saw an offline version, but it looks awesome.
After that we had Vern Thorp, the manager of NASA programs from ULA. He talked about the launching side of everything, and that’s really all I remember.
The next person who spoke, is someone I had met less than a week earlier, Stu Spath. He’s the chief spacecraft engineering from Lockheed Martin, right here in Colorado. When he spoke into the microphone, there was some strange feedback. At first it sounded like the Transformers movie noise, and then it became more of an echo and people began to refer to him as a Cylon. Stu had a really good attitude about it (all of the speakers were very gracious and handled any technical difficulties very well), but when he was the only person to suffer any microphone sound issues, we jokingly continued to call him a Cylon. But as I said, he was very gracious about the whole thing, and talked about the vehicles themselves, and how they would be getting to the moon, and other technical things. ((Lockheed is going to be controlling them, I have seen the Mission Support Center. It’s really just a bunch of stations with like 3 or 4 computers each, but still cool))
The final speaker for the day was one that a lot of people were extremely excited about. I didn’t know who this person was, or why everyone was so excited about him, until after he started speaking, and then it all made sense. The final speaker was Neil deGrasse Tyson. He is an astrophysicist, and the Frederick P. Rose director at the Hayden Planetarium. He’s been on numerous tv shows, and probably has a number of books. He started the event by tweeting a poem he had written. When he first stood up, flashbulbs were going off like he was some sort of Hollywood celebrity, and I suppose he is a celebrity, but within the space fan community. He was also very engaging. He moved around the room, and kept everyone on the edge of their seat. Someone mentioned that it was the quietest moment on twitter the whole day, because no one was tweeting, everyone was just listening to Neil Tyson. He made science fun, and reminded me how much I want to be like that, how I want to be able to take very technical things and reach the non-technical person. He talked about how science should rely on things that can’t be tricked. (for example, human eyes can be tricked)
He was the final speaker, so when he finished, we were going to take a group photo and then were dismissed for the day. It was pouring rain when we were ready to take the photo, so instead of going into the Rocket Garden (it is what it sounds like) we took a group photo around the NASA meatball in the lobby of the building we were in. The amusing part was that directly above the meatball was a Russian Soyuz capsule. The NASA photographer promised to keep the Russian vehicle out of the picture. The picture felt like it took forever (I was on one knee for what felt like forever, and extremely ready to stand up again by the time everyone had been taken) People wandered off, but a large crowd hung around because Neil Tyson was “holding court”, signing autographs, taking photos, and making videos for people who work in education, or who asked for a video. I thought that was pretty awesome. It made him more human, more approachable, to just hang out with people.
As mentioned previously, we should have renamed our group Indecision House, it wasn’t just us though, standing around at the end of the first day, everyone was asking everyone else where to go fro dinner. There was a group of people going to one place, but I really wasn’t feeling that kind of place, and I didn’t want a huge crowd. Eventually the early car for DH, just drove down the large road, near our beach house and just picked a restaurant. We chose a neat little Italian restaurant called Brano’s. The rest of DH joined us there, and it was nice to just have a quiet meal with the 6 of us, talking about what we had seen and heard during the day. After dinner we went back to the beach house, hung out a little bit more and then eventually we all found our way to bed. After all, we had to be at the meeting site by 6am.
Thursday Sept. 8
Launch day! We had to be at the parking lot by 6 am, and almost everyone was there on time. A couple people misjudged the traffic and we had to wait for them, but all told, we left pretty close to 6:30 which was the planned leaving time. While we were waiting in the parking lot, Neil Tyson was giving an astronomy lesson. He had a green laser pointer and was pointing out different constellations as we could see them. He talked about the 7 sisters constellation (unfortunately, I do not remember the specifics, just that he talked about it) which is also the Subaru logo. It was just neat to have Neil Tyson hanging around again, holding court.
Our viewing spot was along the causeway, and so we all piled into the buses and headed to the causeway. When we got there, there were white plastic folding chairs, and for those that hadn’t already brought a chair, we grabbed one and carted it to the specific location where we were going to be. We had to a walk a distance from the buses so we could get to a location where there would be no one in front of us. Unfortunately, we instead had a building in front of the Delta II. Oh well, we’d still have great viewing location.
As we waited, there was always a crowd around Neil Tyson, with people getting pictures and autographs, and all of that. It’s almost a good thing that the Delta II didn’t launch, because if it had, some people might have missed it because they were so intent on Neil Tyson. While everyone else was listening to Neil Tyson, I turned around and was treated to an awesome view of the VAB with clouds rolling over it. I took a picture, but I’m not sure it really turned out very well, since it was just my cell phone camera. I’ll try to put the picture up later. There was no launch on the first day. The first scrub was because the high level winds were in the red, and the second scrub was because there was not enough time to release a weather balloon. Had they been able to, the high level winds probably would have been in the green, and the Delta II launched. Oh well.
We went back to the parking lot, and then headed over to the Visitor Center again, to use our free pass, and spend the day having fun. The first item on the docket was to go have lunch with astronaut Charlie Duke! It really was more, we got food from a buffet and Duke talked to us, but still, he was in the same room, talking about his experiences, and answering our questions. My first bit of sheer excitement came when they played a little intro dvd with pictures from his past. The music was Gettysburg and I recognized it, and the music nerd in me did a little dance...visually in my chair. Oh well, I’m proud of who I am.
After he talked for a few minutes, they opened the floor to questions. Of course, there was a question about how he felt about conspiracy theorists. He gave the answer he gives on the movie In the Shadow of the Moon. I won’t repeat the quote; just tell you to go watch the movie. ((I think it’s great, despite the comment “There weren’t any weak sisters in the bunch”)) Someone else asked if he became a Christian as a result of his trip to the moon. He silenced that person with a quick “No.” Chris asked if it was tougher to be back-up or flight crew, and Duke said that neither was more difficult because they both go equal amounts of training. I had wanted to ask a relatively technical question, but I wasn’t sure if his flight, Apollo 16 was one of the ones that had to do what my question was about, so I sat on it. I was happy to find out that I wasn’t wrong in saying that Duke was the one who got Ken Mattingly exposed to Measles right before Apollo 13. After the lunch, Duke was signing his book, but his book was $50 before the autograph and I just couldn’t stomach that much money on a book, no matter how awesome the author is.
So instead, the group I was with wandered over to the Shuttle Launch Experience. There were some really neat things with that, and it ranks up there with the shuttle astronaut trainer that I got to try out twice, so that was pretty cool. There was also a touch of humor to everything that just made it fun. After the SLE we wandered through the gift store for a few moments and then got in line to get an autograph from Nichelle Nichols. We waited in the heat and humidity for about 45 minutes, before Chris and I started talking about doing something inside. I felt like getting to hear Nichelle Nichols talk specifically to us the day before, was more of an experience than standing in line to spend five seconds getting her autograph. ((She is an amazing woman, but I just couldn’t handle standing in the heat and humidity any longer.))
So Chris and I went off toe see Magnificent Desolation. It was amazing. It ranks up there, in my mind, with In the Shadow of the Moon. I loved every bit of it (except for the 3-D, I wish they hadn’t forced that on us, the glasses were crap and it didn’t add anything to the movie.)) But still, it was a wonderful movie. It did get me to tear up a little in a couple spots, and there was also a touch of humor in there, that was just perfect, and made the movie wonderful.
After that, we met up with James and wandered back to the gift store again. I found some gifts for my family, and we ended our time at the Visitor’s Center with a trip to Astronaut Memorial. A must see, if you go there. While it’s not much, it’s very powerful to think of the lives lost. I believe it also includes fallen Russian cosmonauts.
While we were at the memorial, I spotted a figure moving in the water, and was pleased to see that it was a ‘gator that had decided to “sun” himself on the bank to the lake surrounding the memorial. We moved around to get a better picture, and I stood about 10 feet up and about 20 feet away from a real live ‘gator! I took pictures of that as well. We left the Visitor’s Center and headed tot he Endless BBQ 4.0. Basically it’s just a big party for all the tweetups for Grail, and the tweetup alum that live nearby, and staffers and anyone else that wants to hang out with us. People like Doug Ellison, and Stu Spath were there, so there were a lot of what I’m calling, big wigs. That was neat. It had started to downpour right as we got there, so everyone was hiding inside, when the rain stopped, a group of us were outside, chatting away, and drying off the chairs. When the chairs were dry, we sat down and continued to just talk. I think we spent a good 2 hours, just talking away with Stephanie from JPL about various things, while everyone else got food. Stephanie was one of the staffers, she’s the social media director for JPL. It was just a wonderful time. Eventually we headed back to DH.
Since this was our last night, we decided to make a trip down to the beach, some of us had never been there, and felt like we should at least check it out. We got there, it’s about a 2 minute walk from the beach house, and discovered that it was probably a better, and closer viewing location for the GRAIL launch, than where people would be going on Friday. So we went back to the house, and contacted the Tweetup staffers to tell them that we would not be going on the bus in the morning. Shortly after we sent those e-mails word started circulating that the GRAIL launch for Friday had been completely scrubbed. When we got official confirmation of that, we all decided to sleep in.
Friday Sept. 9
After sleeping in a total of like an hour and a half, a group of us decided to wander back down to the beach and see what we could see. Bryan was already down there, setting up to do some time lapse, and Chris, James, and I headed out shortly after that. We stood on the beach, enjoying the scenery, and watching the tug pulling a barge, that Bryan was hoping to capture in his time lapse. Every now and then we would see a dolphin, pop up but nothing spectacular. James headed back to the beach house, and the rest of us stood around a little while longer. I am so glad that I did, probably 5-10 minutes after he left, there was a large wave that came in, and a dolphin was surfing it. The dolphin was jumping in and out of the water and it just was awesome to watch. None of us thought to get our cameras out, and we’re all hoping that Bryan captured it in his time lapse. There were also a number of sea birds that would dive into the water, or skim the water, inches above it. Very nice way to end our time at Discovery House.
After everyone was packed up, we had one last group meal at this awesome little Cuban/Mexican mom and pop shop. The owner of the restaurant was very friendly and even gave us a little history lesson one certain word usage. It was great. We parted ways ((minus Nicki who was in my car)), for what we thought was the final time, and headed on our way. Nicki and I decided, we’d follow in Chris’s footsteps and head to Downtown Disney and then the airport. We played tag with Chris, starting with me in the front, and then he got ahead of me, and then I got ahead of him. Finally I just let Chris lead, and we ended up parking close to where he was. We went to the Disney store, and then wandered over to the Lego store, and then just looked around to see what was there. Nicki and I got a Bailey’s smoothie, while Chris went off on his own. We met up one last time, and he left for the airport, while we finished our drinks and then did the same.
At the airport, I decided to contact Chris and see where he was, if he was in the same concourse, we could maybe hang out for a few minutes before flights caused us to part ways again. It turned out that he was flying out of the same gate as us! So we hung out until his flight boarded. Shortly after that, we ran into Bryan who was just a couple gates down. We hung around him, looking at the time lapse he short while going through security, until it was close to time for us to board. One look outside though, and we knew we were in for trouble. A nasty storm rolled in, cut visibility significantly, and caused the airport to close down until the storm passed. It was a neat storm, and I’m glad we weren’t trying to depart in the midst of it, but at the same time, once it passed, there were a lot of delayed flights that wanted to get out asap so there wouldn’t be a long line of delayed flights, which meant that we got to sit on the tarmac for a long time, waiting for our turn to depart. But finally we got home and the whirlwind experience ended.
I will always treasure the time I had. I’m bummed that I didn’t get to see the launch, but I had so many other wonderful experiences and memories, that the launch was just icing on the cake. GRAIL did launch on Sat. morning, in the second launch window. I’m so happy for those that got to see it, and the fact that I wasn’t there live, means I have more motivation to go to another launch and get my experience. I hear it is life changing. :-)
If you stuck with me through this, that’s awesome. I had an amazing time, and will forever cherish the memories.
This is officially Day One of the tweetup. As I mentioned in the previous entry the DH crew decided to split into two groups. One was an early group, so that James could get his badge and not have to wait in a super long line. I chose the early group, besides, who was going to be able to sleep in when the Tweetup was going to be starting in just a couple hours! We got to the badging location early , and there weren’t a lot of people there, so it took James only a couple of minutes to get everything. After he got his stuff, we had time to go get breakfast, so we asked for a place to go for breakfast and headed off. It was the three of us, plus one other person who was wandering around and wanted to join us for breakfast. I cannot remember his name, but I remember his twitter account. We missed the turn for our original intent, and so ended up eating at McDonalds in Titusville. Nothing special there, but on the way back to the Visitor Center, we saw some dolphins. I was super excited because dolphins are not an animal that you can see in Colorado. I also saw some floating profiles of ‘gators, but that wasn’t nearly as exciting to me as the dolphins were.
When we got back to the Visitor’s Center, we had just a couple minutes to stand around, talking to people, before they opened the gates and let us into the room we would be using for the non-tour portion of the day. Everyone got settled in their own spot, and the Tweetup officially started!
The first order of business was to do introductions. With 150 tweetup participants and about 5 or 6 staff members, it was going to take a long time, if people didn’t keep it short. The request was that everyone would introduce themselves, by saying their name, and their twitter handle, where they are from and one interesting fact about themselves, if they wanted to. On the schedule, it was listed that we would have 50 minutes to get through everyone. We ended approximately 50 minutes later. I was pretty impressed with the efficiency. No one seemed long winded when they said their introduction. Some people were funny, but overall, it was just really neat to learn where everyone was from, and put more faces to names, or hear about people that we hadn’t been following yet, and wanted to start doing so. It also helped to connect some of the facebook people to a twitter handle. After everyone had said their introduction, it was time to get on the buses and head out for the morning tours.
There were four buses. If my memory serves me, I was on bus 3. I’m 99% sure that is correct, but that was not one of the important parts of the tweetup, so it didn’t stick with me. Our tour was going to take us to the military side of Cape Canaveral Base, and the Kennedy Space Center side. We started on the military side, and went first to Pad 41. This is the launchpad from where Juno launched, and I believe the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) will be launching from that pad as well. We had to stand behind a fence, and look from a distance, so there really isn’t much more to talk about. I had forgotten my mosquito repellant so I tried to hide in the middle of the group. I think I only got one bite, and I did my best not to scratch it in the beginning and so it was never an itchy issue for me.
After that, we went to SLC-17 which is where the Delta II was going to launch from, and where GRAIL was. The white room was surrounding the area where GRAIL was, so we didn’t really get to see much, except the outline of the Delta II. The gantry would be rolling back at 11pm that night in preparation for launch. While we were there, reporters and some other people were setting up cameras to capture different angles of the launch.
Throughout the tour, I continued to look for wildlife. I saw plenty of ‘gator backs, and some more dolphins. Of course, it was always the tail end of the dolphin, or the dorsal fin, but still neat.
The next stop on our tour was the Vehicle Assembly Building, or VAB. For those of you readers that don’t know what the VAB is, it’s where the Saturn V was assembled, and where the Space Shuttle was loaded onto the External Tank and the Solid Rocket Boosters. It is a -large- building. As we walked inside the tour guide gave us some background on how the vehicles were assembled. I listened but I was fascinated by all of the metal and just how big it was. And we weren’t even in the high bays. (I have seen a Saturn V, layed out horizontally, but that never really had any meaning to me, until I saw the VAB and got a sense of just how big this would be. There were banners for a lot of the shuttle flights. “We’re behind you [Endeavour, Atlantis, Discovery, Challenger, Columbia]” I took a couple pictures of the banners, they had signatures on them, and I assume the signatures were all the people who worked on that mission.
During the whole day, people are tweeting and facebooking. Because I have a smart phone, I was able to keep up with some of it. I could see what others were saying, and also post my own thoughts. We had been told that we might get to see a Shuttle, but no one was sure which one. Because we saw the VAB third, I had seen, from others that had been to the VAB, that we would be getting to see Endeavour. We walked to the back, and there she was. I referred to her as being in a state of undress, since that’s pretty much what it was, Endeavour is being prepped to be located, I think in California. There was a group picture of our bus group, in front of Endeavour, and then we headed out. I was still in awe over seeing a Shuttle up close, but also being in the VAB. ((I later learned, that getting to go inside the VAB is a very special thing, and I feel so fortunate to have been able to go inside))
The final stop was the countdown clock, which is maybe a half mile from the VAB. We were running behind, and our tourguide asked if we really wanted to stop at the clock, because it wasn’t running, so there wasn’t really much to see. Half the bus had an emphatic yes, so we stopped and the guide urged us to make it only about 5 minutes. I got a glimpse of Pad 39A and 39B from where we were, but took no pictures. ((This is where the Shuttles launched from)) Instead, I turned around, and took a couple more pictures of the VAB, and then got back in the bus. Since it wasn’t running, and it was hot and humid, and mosquito-y outside, I was happy to get back on the bus.
As we headed back to the Visitor’s Center, we passed by the front of Launch Control Center, or LCC, and then drove around a crawler. The crawler is this vehicle that would ferry the prepared shuttle from the VAB to the launch pad. It’s a distance of about 4 miles, and the crawler would do it in about 8 hours. ((So a very slow moving vehicle)) It moved slowly because it was moving a heavy load, and because slower is more stable. After seeing that, we drove by a 50 year old eagle nest. ((KSC and JSC are built on nature preserves and so they deal closely with wildlife.)) As I said, this eagle nest was 50 years old, so it had been around for quite awhile.
Once we got back to the Visitor Center, we were dismissed for lunch. People could eat at the Visitor Center, or go out somewhere else. The group I was with, decided to eat at the Visitor Center, so we didn’t have to worry about finding a parking spot, or waiting around for the gate to be opened. ((We got to sneak in a side gate, instead of having to go through the entrance))
After lunch, we were going to have an afternoon of lectures, so everyone had their laptops or tablet devices to that they could use social media during the speakers presentations. This is the only event I know of, where it is okay not to be engaging the speaker, but being on your electronic device. We had been promised a wi-fi connection to use for the afternoon, but when we returned from lunch, the wi-fi was not working. Eventually, only 60 or so people were unable to get on the wi-fi. ((I was one of those people, but since I had a smart phone, I could just use that. There were other people that were unable to do anything during the speaker presentations because they only had a laptop and the laptop wasn’t able to connect to the wi-fi. We found out, later in the afternoon, that there had been a request put in for another subnet, but they were unsure of who needed to approve the measure to get the additional subnet. That’s government! After that, we found out that the IT people had never given out enough IP addresses for all 150 people anyway. We were baffled by how the IT people decided to provide that little of space for an event that is all about social media, but oh well. Also, the matter was resolved after the event ended for the day.))
Afternoon Lectures
The afternoon event was going to be livestreamed, so there were cameras and lights set up all around the room to make sure that people watching online could see the speakers and the presentation slides. The lights were somewhat distracting to us, because we couldn’t see the slides, but we were assured that all the slides would be put up online for us to view.
The first speaker was Charles Bolden, the head of NASA. He was a very engaging speaker, and seemed very personable and down to Earth. I will admit here and now, that my opinion of him, coming in to the event was colored by JSC friends who complained about him. I hadn’t done any research, and I kept an open mind while he talked and I was very impressed. I liked him a lot, and the one thing that stuck with me about him was “I don’t know everything going on at NASA, and as an administrator, I shouldn’t.” I’m not sure why that sticks with me, but it really sticks with me, and I like it. When he finished talking with us, he mentioned that he had a special guest speaker, and introduced Nichelle Nichols.
For those of you who don’t know who she is, she was on the original Star Trek series, and she broke a lot of barries, not only for women, but for people of color and minorities. She told us a story about how she got involved with NASA. I was impressed with her, her story, what she has overcome, and how she helped push boundaries. The quote that stuck with me was “Nothing is impossible.” She said something else, that I really liked, but I was in the process of making a tweet, and don’t have the quote handy. I want to say it was something along the lines of “If you can dream it, you can be it, you can do it” But I don’t think that’s correct. Hopefully someone will read this that does remember the quote and share it with the rest of my readers.
I’m going to apologize now, to all of the people that spoke, they shared some awesome things, and I am grateful for the time they gave us, but I don’t have quotes, or really a lot of information about everyone.
The next speaker was NASA Jim. He was funny, amusing, fun, and seriously loves his job. He talked about keeping the conversation going, sharing with everyone what NASA does, and how important math is. “Math is important, no matter what you’re doing.”
After that was Maria Zuber, the principal investigator for GRAIL, from MIT. She talked about the technical mission for GRAIL, and what we assume about the moon, and how much we don’t know. ((Some of the Apollo astronauts brought back stuff from the moon and we are STILL analyzing it and learning things from it.))
After Maria, was Sami Asmar, the Deputy Project scientist for GRAIL, from JPL. I don’t remember anything special about what he said, except that he was relieved that Maria went first because she answered the hard questions.
Next we had a couple speakers from Sally Ride Science, to talk about MoonKAM. MoonKAM is a project where school classrooms and can sign up, and eventually tell the GRAIL twins (if I didn’t mention it before, GRAIL is twin vehicles) were to go and what to take a picture of, and then get those pictures back. They talked all about how people can get involved and encouraged us to share information about MoonKAM to everyone. For my own part, I wear the MoonKAM bracelet we were given, all the time, in hopes that someone will ask me about it, and I can talk about the awesome project that it will be.
At this point, we had a break, and the staffers tried to fix our wi-fi woes. ((It became a joke amongst people that we should have asked Bolden to approve the subnet))
After the break, we had Doug Ellison talk to us about “Eyes on the Solar System” It’s this awesome software, that some of us called Google Earth for the Universe. You can look at the universe from 1950-2050. There’s pictures of different planets, and solar systems, you can get information on where Juno is, or some of the other vehicles out there. When more information is available, the twin GRAIL vehicles will be viewable too. The software is still in Beta testing, and we saw an offline version, but it looks awesome.
After that we had Vern Thorp, the manager of NASA programs from ULA. He talked about the launching side of everything, and that’s really all I remember.
The next person who spoke, is someone I had met less than a week earlier, Stu Spath. He’s the chief spacecraft engineering from Lockheed Martin, right here in Colorado. When he spoke into the microphone, there was some strange feedback. At first it sounded like the Transformers movie noise, and then it became more of an echo and people began to refer to him as a Cylon. Stu had a really good attitude about it (all of the speakers were very gracious and handled any technical difficulties very well), but when he was the only person to suffer any microphone sound issues, we jokingly continued to call him a Cylon. But as I said, he was very gracious about the whole thing, and talked about the vehicles themselves, and how they would be getting to the moon, and other technical things. ((Lockheed is going to be controlling them, I have seen the Mission Support Center. It’s really just a bunch of stations with like 3 or 4 computers each, but still cool))
The final speaker for the day was one that a lot of people were extremely excited about. I didn’t know who this person was, or why everyone was so excited about him, until after he started speaking, and then it all made sense. The final speaker was Neil deGrasse Tyson. He is an astrophysicist, and the Frederick P. Rose director at the Hayden Planetarium. He’s been on numerous tv shows, and probably has a number of books. He started the event by tweeting a poem he had written. When he first stood up, flashbulbs were going off like he was some sort of Hollywood celebrity, and I suppose he is a celebrity, but within the space fan community. He was also very engaging. He moved around the room, and kept everyone on the edge of their seat. Someone mentioned that it was the quietest moment on twitter the whole day, because no one was tweeting, everyone was just listening to Neil Tyson. He made science fun, and reminded me how much I want to be like that, how I want to be able to take very technical things and reach the non-technical person. He talked about how science should rely on things that can’t be tricked. (for example, human eyes can be tricked)
He was the final speaker, so when he finished, we were going to take a group photo and then were dismissed for the day. It was pouring rain when we were ready to take the photo, so instead of going into the Rocket Garden (it is what it sounds like) we took a group photo around the NASA meatball in the lobby of the building we were in. The amusing part was that directly above the meatball was a Russian Soyuz capsule. The NASA photographer promised to keep the Russian vehicle out of the picture. The picture felt like it took forever (I was on one knee for what felt like forever, and extremely ready to stand up again by the time everyone had been taken) People wandered off, but a large crowd hung around because Neil Tyson was “holding court”, signing autographs, taking photos, and making videos for people who work in education, or who asked for a video. I thought that was pretty awesome. It made him more human, more approachable, to just hang out with people.
As mentioned previously, we should have renamed our group Indecision House, it wasn’t just us though, standing around at the end of the first day, everyone was asking everyone else where to go fro dinner. There was a group of people going to one place, but I really wasn’t feeling that kind of place, and I didn’t want a huge crowd. Eventually the early car for DH, just drove down the large road, near our beach house and just picked a restaurant. We chose a neat little Italian restaurant called Brano’s. The rest of DH joined us there, and it was nice to just have a quiet meal with the 6 of us, talking about what we had seen and heard during the day. After dinner we went back to the beach house, hung out a little bit more and then eventually we all found our way to bed. After all, we had to be at the meeting site by 6am.
Thursday Sept. 8
Launch day! We had to be at the parking lot by 6 am, and almost everyone was there on time. A couple people misjudged the traffic and we had to wait for them, but all told, we left pretty close to 6:30 which was the planned leaving time. While we were waiting in the parking lot, Neil Tyson was giving an astronomy lesson. He had a green laser pointer and was pointing out different constellations as we could see them. He talked about the 7 sisters constellation (unfortunately, I do not remember the specifics, just that he talked about it) which is also the Subaru logo. It was just neat to have Neil Tyson hanging around again, holding court.
Our viewing spot was along the causeway, and so we all piled into the buses and headed to the causeway. When we got there, there were white plastic folding chairs, and for those that hadn’t already brought a chair, we grabbed one and carted it to the specific location where we were going to be. We had to a walk a distance from the buses so we could get to a location where there would be no one in front of us. Unfortunately, we instead had a building in front of the Delta II. Oh well, we’d still have great viewing location.
As we waited, there was always a crowd around Neil Tyson, with people getting pictures and autographs, and all of that. It’s almost a good thing that the Delta II didn’t launch, because if it had, some people might have missed it because they were so intent on Neil Tyson. While everyone else was listening to Neil Tyson, I turned around and was treated to an awesome view of the VAB with clouds rolling over it. I took a picture, but I’m not sure it really turned out very well, since it was just my cell phone camera. I’ll try to put the picture up later. There was no launch on the first day. The first scrub was because the high level winds were in the red, and the second scrub was because there was not enough time to release a weather balloon. Had they been able to, the high level winds probably would have been in the green, and the Delta II launched. Oh well.
We went back to the parking lot, and then headed over to the Visitor Center again, to use our free pass, and spend the day having fun. The first item on the docket was to go have lunch with astronaut Charlie Duke! It really was more, we got food from a buffet and Duke talked to us, but still, he was in the same room, talking about his experiences, and answering our questions. My first bit of sheer excitement came when they played a little intro dvd with pictures from his past. The music was Gettysburg and I recognized it, and the music nerd in me did a little dance...visually in my chair. Oh well, I’m proud of who I am.
After he talked for a few minutes, they opened the floor to questions. Of course, there was a question about how he felt about conspiracy theorists. He gave the answer he gives on the movie In the Shadow of the Moon. I won’t repeat the quote; just tell you to go watch the movie. ((I think it’s great, despite the comment “There weren’t any weak sisters in the bunch”)) Someone else asked if he became a Christian as a result of his trip to the moon. He silenced that person with a quick “No.” Chris asked if it was tougher to be back-up or flight crew, and Duke said that neither was more difficult because they both go equal amounts of training. I had wanted to ask a relatively technical question, but I wasn’t sure if his flight, Apollo 16 was one of the ones that had to do what my question was about, so I sat on it. I was happy to find out that I wasn’t wrong in saying that Duke was the one who got Ken Mattingly exposed to Measles right before Apollo 13. After the lunch, Duke was signing his book, but his book was $50 before the autograph and I just couldn’t stomach that much money on a book, no matter how awesome the author is.
So instead, the group I was with wandered over to the Shuttle Launch Experience. There were some really neat things with that, and it ranks up there with the shuttle astronaut trainer that I got to try out twice, so that was pretty cool. There was also a touch of humor to everything that just made it fun. After the SLE we wandered through the gift store for a few moments and then got in line to get an autograph from Nichelle Nichols. We waited in the heat and humidity for about 45 minutes, before Chris and I started talking about doing something inside. I felt like getting to hear Nichelle Nichols talk specifically to us the day before, was more of an experience than standing in line to spend five seconds getting her autograph. ((She is an amazing woman, but I just couldn’t handle standing in the heat and humidity any longer.))
So Chris and I went off toe see Magnificent Desolation. It was amazing. It ranks up there, in my mind, with In the Shadow of the Moon. I loved every bit of it (except for the 3-D, I wish they hadn’t forced that on us, the glasses were crap and it didn’t add anything to the movie.)) But still, it was a wonderful movie. It did get me to tear up a little in a couple spots, and there was also a touch of humor in there, that was just perfect, and made the movie wonderful.
After that, we met up with James and wandered back to the gift store again. I found some gifts for my family, and we ended our time at the Visitor’s Center with a trip to Astronaut Memorial. A must see, if you go there. While it’s not much, it’s very powerful to think of the lives lost. I believe it also includes fallen Russian cosmonauts.
While we were at the memorial, I spotted a figure moving in the water, and was pleased to see that it was a ‘gator that had decided to “sun” himself on the bank to the lake surrounding the memorial. We moved around to get a better picture, and I stood about 10 feet up and about 20 feet away from a real live ‘gator! I took pictures of that as well. We left the Visitor’s Center and headed tot he Endless BBQ 4.0. Basically it’s just a big party for all the tweetups for Grail, and the tweetup alum that live nearby, and staffers and anyone else that wants to hang out with us. People like Doug Ellison, and Stu Spath were there, so there were a lot of what I’m calling, big wigs. That was neat. It had started to downpour right as we got there, so everyone was hiding inside, when the rain stopped, a group of us were outside, chatting away, and drying off the chairs. When the chairs were dry, we sat down and continued to just talk. I think we spent a good 2 hours, just talking away with Stephanie from JPL about various things, while everyone else got food. Stephanie was one of the staffers, she’s the social media director for JPL. It was just a wonderful time. Eventually we headed back to DH.
Since this was our last night, we decided to make a trip down to the beach, some of us had never been there, and felt like we should at least check it out. We got there, it’s about a 2 minute walk from the beach house, and discovered that it was probably a better, and closer viewing location for the GRAIL launch, than where people would be going on Friday. So we went back to the house, and contacted the Tweetup staffers to tell them that we would not be going on the bus in the morning. Shortly after we sent those e-mails word started circulating that the GRAIL launch for Friday had been completely scrubbed. When we got official confirmation of that, we all decided to sleep in.
Friday Sept. 9
After sleeping in a total of like an hour and a half, a group of us decided to wander back down to the beach and see what we could see. Bryan was already down there, setting up to do some time lapse, and Chris, James, and I headed out shortly after that. We stood on the beach, enjoying the scenery, and watching the tug pulling a barge, that Bryan was hoping to capture in his time lapse. Every now and then we would see a dolphin, pop up but nothing spectacular. James headed back to the beach house, and the rest of us stood around a little while longer. I am so glad that I did, probably 5-10 minutes after he left, there was a large wave that came in, and a dolphin was surfing it. The dolphin was jumping in and out of the water and it just was awesome to watch. None of us thought to get our cameras out, and we’re all hoping that Bryan captured it in his time lapse. There were also a number of sea birds that would dive into the water, or skim the water, inches above it. Very nice way to end our time at Discovery House.
After everyone was packed up, we had one last group meal at this awesome little Cuban/Mexican mom and pop shop. The owner of the restaurant was very friendly and even gave us a little history lesson one certain word usage. It was great. We parted ways ((minus Nicki who was in my car)), for what we thought was the final time, and headed on our way. Nicki and I decided, we’d follow in Chris’s footsteps and head to Downtown Disney and then the airport. We played tag with Chris, starting with me in the front, and then he got ahead of me, and then I got ahead of him. Finally I just let Chris lead, and we ended up parking close to where he was. We went to the Disney store, and then wandered over to the Lego store, and then just looked around to see what was there. Nicki and I got a Bailey’s smoothie, while Chris went off on his own. We met up one last time, and he left for the airport, while we finished our drinks and then did the same.
At the airport, I decided to contact Chris and see where he was, if he was in the same concourse, we could maybe hang out for a few minutes before flights caused us to part ways again. It turned out that he was flying out of the same gate as us! So we hung out until his flight boarded. Shortly after that, we ran into Bryan who was just a couple gates down. We hung around him, looking at the time lapse he short while going through security, until it was close to time for us to board. One look outside though, and we knew we were in for trouble. A nasty storm rolled in, cut visibility significantly, and caused the airport to close down until the storm passed. It was a neat storm, and I’m glad we weren’t trying to depart in the midst of it, but at the same time, once it passed, there were a lot of delayed flights that wanted to get out asap so there wouldn’t be a long line of delayed flights, which meant that we got to sit on the tarmac for a long time, waiting for our turn to depart. But finally we got home and the whirlwind experience ended.
I will always treasure the time I had. I’m bummed that I didn’t get to see the launch, but I had so many other wonderful experiences and memories, that the launch was just icing on the cake. GRAIL did launch on Sat. morning, in the second launch window. I’m so happy for those that got to see it, and the fact that I wasn’t there live, means I have more motivation to go to another launch and get my experience. I hear it is life changing. :-)
If you stuck with me through this, that’s awesome. I had an amazing time, and will forever cherish the memories.