Archive of Writings
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NASA Tweetup for STS-129: Postscript
It feels like a lifetime has passed since the Shuttle Launch, but I need to finish telling that story before I can move onto something new. That November the shuttle Atlantis launched flawlessly. It is all a mosaic of moments: the shuttle astronauts drove past and...
NASA Tweetup for STS-129: Day 2
We're here. We're actually here. It is launch day for STS-129, the next to last launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis. We settled into our seats at T-3 hours and holding, waiting for the crew to head out the vehicle and load up and get locked in (a new meaning for load...
NASA Tweetup for STS-129: Day 1
It's morning and none of us have had enough coffee, but the approximately 100 of us in a conference room in the Rocket part are wide awake. Jon Cowart, Ares 1X deputy mission director, is currently going from table to table asking us to identify mystery items in a run...
STS-129 NASA Tweetup, Day 0
A few weeks ago one of my students pointed out, OMG THE NASA TWEETUP PAGE WENT UP EARLY! While most of us in the room had alarms set off to go off at noon to register for this special event, it wasn't yet noon, and in a rush of adrenaline and typing we went to the...
Of Bacon and Erdos
And now for something entirely silly I have an Erdos Number of no more than 6. For certain: Wheeler (3) -> Shetron -> Lambert->Me (I suspect it's actually 1 lower because Lambert published A LOT, but I haven't found the path yet) My Bacon number is no more...
A week to look up: LCROSS Impact and White House Star Party
As a 1 year long event, IYA2009 has worked hard to provide a steady stream of events. That said, some weeks are more interesting than others, and this week is shaping up to be one of those more interesting weeks. On October 7, Mr and Mrs Obama will host a star party...
Galileoscope: A dream of 1 Telescope Per Child
I know a set of men who had a dream. They wanted to see every child in the world have access to a high-quality low-cost telescope. They wanted something that would show the rings of Saturn, survive a tumble down the stairs, and just keep revealing the sky night after...
You must have Power to Stop Discrimination
This is a piece on gender inequity and sexual discrimination (not sexual harassment, which is a different and emotionally more devastating thing). I´m writing this at this time not because of any one thing that´s happened, but because of a culmination of things....
NASA Town Hall Meeting
It is with great hope that I blog this town hall meeting. Tonight the new EP/O Lead for NASA, Steph Stockman (geosteph on twitter), is presenting NASA Education and the new vision for NASA's new future under Charles Bolden. As some of you know, for the past several...
Dragon*Con Retrospective
Last week I had the opportunity to go to Dragon*Con, where I slept too little and ran real hard. It was good, but I have to admit it is all a blur of images and emotions. When I try to think of those 4 days in Atlanta, my brain responds with flickering fragments of...