Geek Habitat

Want to see the next shuttle launch? Go to http://www.nasa.gov/nasatweetup to put you name into the hat.

Yes, apparently I have forgotten I have my own blog… I’ll try to stop being such a stranger around here!

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I posted the following as a series of tweets (start here,) and they struck me as something I would like to record in the blog and expand upon in a full entry at a later date. Apologies to those for whom this is a repeat (but thanks for following me on Twitter, if so!)

I feel a VOID due to the loss of the Constellation program and Moon 2.0, but it occurs to me — what was NASA’s grand vision/goal when I was growing up (frame of reference: 1986 to 1993)? There really wasn’t one. I remember being incredibly disillusioned/disheartened when Space Station Freedom was cancelled. I remember wishing for the “glory days” of Skylab. Despite that, I recall a childhood and indeed, a lifetime thus far, spent excited and inspired by what NASA and our international partners were/are doing. Out of the “ashes” of Space Station Freedom, I never could have imagined all that we would accomplish building and inhabiting the International Space Station. My point being: dreams make their own reality, in a way. Those who love space, exploration, education, knowledge: don’t stop dreaming.

Need to blog about NASA’s most recent tweetup, which I had the privilege of attending at Johnson Space Center on February 17, 2010.

Watch this space (and sorry that my Twitter plug-in apparently activated itself to spew stuff for the past week without my knowledge! )

Awesome videos & interviews of STS-129’s launch & the NASA Tweetup back on November 15-16 from the folks at SpaceFlightNow.com, including Miles O’Brien (@milesobrien) and David Waters (@davidgwaters):

Check ‘em out at The STS-129 Experience: Tweetup & Launch

I bought Sara’s Halloween costume LONG before the STS-129 NASA Tweetup was even announced, much less before I knew I was going to be one of the lucky attendees. I could have bought her an International Space Station or even a Project Constellation / Ares flight suit (the latter, of course, doesn’t even exist yet since it’s a long way from manned spaceflights), but the Space Shuttle is what I grew up with and I will always have a very special place in my heart for the Space Transportation System (STS) and the orbiter in particular.

Even with, or perhaps even because of, the Space Shuttle program slowly winding down (heavy sigh), I wanted her flight suit to be a memento/keepsake not just a Halloween costume–a reminder that when she was *imagine holding up the flight suit* “only this big” the Space Shuttle was still flying and building out the International Space Station.

Anyway, the moment my husband Justin (@bikegeek) took that photo of her I knew it was a keeper. It’s going to end up as a canvas wrap art print on our wall at home (it would already be there, if not for my expenditures to attend the tweetup!) and, naturally, when I discovered I was one of the lucky attendees it became the photo I featured on my contact/business cards–all of which I ended up handing out to people at the NASA Tweetup or elsewhere during my stay in Florida for the Tweetup.

And it ended up on my luggage tags and my desktop wallpaper, too.

So, naturally, it was perfect when I was approached during the (crazy-busy but awesome) launch day activities inside the STS-129 NASA Tweetup tent by @skytland who wanted to feature Justin’s photo of Sara in an article on OpenNASA.com, a collaborative blog written by NASA employees across the agency, and occasional invited guests. The article, “It’s Better in Person,” is terrific and it’s an honor to see our beautiful daughter’s photo featured in it!

A high resolution copy of the photo is available on Flickr via a Creative Commons-Attribution-ShareAlike license, which means anyone can use it for pretty much any purpose as long as they credit my husband Justin with the photo — Justin W. Moore / @bikegeek / Moore Photography & Design are all options, with the preference being his name plus one of the other items.

And thus, our already amazing and wonderful daughter is shared with the world in a most wonderful way–helping to advance the quest for space and the expansion of human knowledge. It doesn’t get any better than that. Wait, it does…seeing a Space Shuttle launch in person with 100+ amazing people? Indescribably perfect. Thank you so much, NASA!

I’m cheating and reposting, in full, my response to @davidgwaters’s question on Twitter.com:

Think of this as a nascent STS-129 NASA Tweetup blog post. I still have many more thoughts and blog post ideas related to #nasatweetup percolating in my head. Please check back periodically, or follow me on Twitter for those!

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I haven’t written a true blog entry about my #nasatweetup experience yet, but I thought I’d share a few things that convey what the STS-129 NASA Tweetup has meant to/for me.

For starters, view my video on YouTube posted less than 24 hours after the successful launch of STS-129: Post STS-129 Tweetup Observations & Emotions .

I’m not an Internet marketer, a business development person, an engineer or scientist. I’m just a mom and a (very) part-time web developer and programmer. My daughter turns 3 in mid-March 2010. I hadn’t traveled alone (without co-workers or my spouse) in many years; in fact, the last time I traveled by myself was 1987 when I attended U.S. Space Camp (@SpaceCampUSA) in Huntsville, Alabama, at the age of ~13 years old. I’m an “uber space geek” in every sense of the word and one of the early members of the Space Tweep Society (http://www.spacetweepsociety.org/) founded by Kennedy Space Center (KSC) employee Jen Scheer (@flyingjenny).

Attending the STS-129 NASA Tweetup represented a not-insignificant expense to me & my family, since I live in San Antonio, Texas and I intended to remain in Florida until STS-129 launched, whether or not it was during the two days allocated to the STS-129 Tweetup by NASA. If launch had slipped to December, obviously, I’d have had to head home, but otherwise I had done all the research and booked my stay to last the duration of the available launch windows for STS-129 (I booked airfare thru Southwest Airlines (@SouthwestAir) which offers penalty-free flight changes at any time, and I’d prepaid my hotel from November 14th with checkout on November 19th.)

Seeing a Space Shuttle in person, much less a launch, has been a lifelong dream of mine. With the Shuttle program dwindling down, I had long ago assumed this was a dream that would, forever, remain unfulfilled. When I heard about the STS-129 NASA Tweetup I entered, but with *very little* expectation of being selected.

** talk about burying the lead **

WHAT HAS #nasatweetup DONE FOR ME?

I have been inspired, overjoyed, honored & struck numb without words to express my experience at the tweetup. I had never-before attended a tweetup, much less such a high profile one. I have been very active on Twitter, but prior to NASA’s STS-129 NASA Tweetup announcement, my interest & activity on Twitter.com was flagging a bit… it was interesting but wasn’t providing any real value, per se. Now, I feel as though I have at the very least 100 new very close friends and my horizons & excitement for NASA have been broadened even further (something I didn’t anticipate, having been a lifelong space geek.) I learned so many new tidbits from the speakers NASA lined up, which again, as a lifelong space geek I didn’t anticipate. If I was an uber space geek when I picked up my ID badge, I left Florida at the conclusion of my visit an even greater advocate for NASA’s role in space exploration, particularly manned spaceflight.

Attending the STS-129 NASA Tweetup reaped immediate rewards, including folks I’d met helping me (via Twitter) find a licensed Apple repair/reseller near my hotel (versus 121 miles away in Tampa, FL) so I could replace my MacBook Pro’s fraying & about-to-melt power brick. I met so many amazing, intelligent, wonderful people–many of whom I intend to stay in touch with for the long haul. I met so many kindred spirits and I finally got to put faces, names, back-stories and shared experiences with the Twitter handles I’d been chatting back & forth with over the past year or so. I immediately felt like I was among “my people”. This happened before I’d so much as left the conference center on day #1 of the tweetup, and I was drawn not only to my fellow attendees but also the INFECTIOUS ENTHUSIASM of NASA’s own Twitterati, including NASA’s Beth Beck (@bethbeck) & John Yembrick (@NASA). I could not wipe the grin off my face for the duration of the tweetup, nor truthfully the duration of my stay in Florida. Yes, indeed, I enjoyed the launch and tweetup so much, and was so floored when STS-129 launched without a hitch on her first launch window, that I stayed in Florida thru November 19th as I’d originally booked, meeting up again with my fellow Space Tweeps / tweetup attendees and NASA employees like @flyingjenny. Thanks to them, I even got to watch both of STS-129’s Solid Rocket Boosters being towed from sea back thru Canaveral Lock for refurbishment & reuse (see my YouTube playlist: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=F426A306DFF9B686)

I thought this would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I thought I would be fine with this being my FIRST AND LAST Space Shuttle launch. Long before we were through STS-129 NASA Tweetup Day #1 events, I was already plotting how I could find a way (financially) to swing attending another NASA Tweetup (launch or otherwise.)

If I can answer any other questions, let me know.

- Shannon Moore (@Ageekmom)

http://www.geekhabitat.com/