NASA is an agency that brings the aspirations of our nation to the forefront. It’s about coming together to do what can’t be done now. NASA is about living up our promise and pushing our limits.  NASA is about doing things, “… not because they are easy, but because they are hard” as President Kennedy put it.

For my entire life, NASA and the Space Shuttle in particular, have meant hope to me. It has represented the ability of our nation and people around the world to break the bonds of gravity and get off our planet. For a child of divorce, getting up and away from the gravity of every day life meant a lot to me. As a child, my coping mechanism was taking on the job to keep everybody else happy, but when I was thinking about space (or some other things) I was able to rise above the every day of my life and think about the pure possibilities presented by life. If humans could get to a place where even the law of gravity didn’t apply, then I could imagine a place where it wasn’t my job to make sure everyone else was happy, where what I wanted wasn’t important, in short, a place where I mattered. The fact that Astronauts are national heroes made it even better. I could imagine myself getting away from the gravity of earth and when I came back, I would be the hero… As I grew up, I began to take NASA and the Space Shuttle program for granted. As designed, the program became routine for me. There were Shuttles flying on a regular basis and it seemed far away from my daily life.

Then came February 1, 2003, my second “Where Were You When…?” date. I knew that the STS-107 mission had launched on my birthday, but didn’t think much about it. I was at the beginning of a very busy time in my job and was completely focused on that reality, not that of the seven explorers circling above my head. February 1, 2003 was a Saturday morning. I was headed in to work to try and stay on top of things. As I drove the 42 freeway miles between my home and my office, I turned on the radio and they were taking about the landing of Columbia. I figured it would be a short segment, describing the touchdown and then we would get back to regular programming. In truth, I wasn’t much listening, instead, I was thinking about the day’s work. I did, however notice that regular programming had not returned and Columbia’s landing was the still the subject of the conversation. I began to listen more closely, and realizing what had happened, I was truly taken aback. For the second time in my life, Astronauts had been lost in flight.

Between 1986 and 2003, technology had advanced greatly, so I got in to work and started doing all the research I could on the STS-107 mission, and kept up closely with the news. More important than that, my interest in NASA, the Space Shuttle Program, and space in general was rekindled. The new technology meant that when flights resumed in 2005, I was able to watch them from my desk and download a great deal of information about the mission. I was able to reconnect with the program and NASA, which was a wonderful thing.

As 2005 turned to 2006 and the second return to flight mission occurred, I was able to get more and more information about the program, watch the missions live on my computer, and feel a similar sense of wonder about space travel as I had when I was a kid. The years went on and my interest continued and grew. By the time the STS-125 mission occurred in 2009, I was a full on space geek. I was able to witness the law of gravity being broken in real-time, for the entire duration of each Space Shuttle mission.  I was also able to learn more about the program and the people who made it work.

When I joined Twitter in October of 2008, little did I know that It would lead me to attend a Space Shuttle launch, visit Mission Control and Johnson Space Center (twice) and find a community of space geeks across the world, just like me. I’ve learned that space doesn’t just mean manned space flight. It means journeys to other planets to observe and explore the surface. It means getting outside our Solar System and putting human existence into a universal perspective, as Carl Sagan did with the famous Pale Blue Dot photo taken in 1990 by Voyager 1 at a distance of 3.7 billion miles from Earth.

Voyager 1 remains the furthest human built object away from earth. It is approximately 11,061,750,600 miles from Earth today. Even more amazing is the fact that we can still communicate with it.

For me, NASA means an escape from the gravity of life and Earth. It means a community of friends who shares an interest and love for space. It means human achievement that I can share with my son and daughter. For me, NASA means hope.

It’s International Observe the Moon Night, so I wanted to get out into the night air and spend some time with the moon. My family and I are on a mini road trip and the house we’re staying in has a telescope, so after dinner, I set it up and took aim at the moon.

It’s you’ve never seen the moon through even a low powered telescope, it’s worth taking the time to do it. You can make out an amazing amount of detail event with a store bought telescope. We all looked at the moon through the scope and it was awesome.

Then my son and I headed out for a walk. TLG is three and he is in adventure mode. He wants everything to be an adventure and our walk down the fairway of the golf course this house is situated on certainly qualified. First we hunted for food, then for sand, then for grass, and so on. Then we followed the moon. My son has had a fascination with the moon for most of his life and I love the fact that he hasn’t outgrown it. It’s fun to find the moon with him and tonight’s series of adventures following the moon and being followed by it were a lot of fun. He knows that humans have been there. He knows that it’s a rocket ride away and several times over the course of the adventures, we boarded a rocket to the moon and walked on it. After our adventures, we came home and I put him to bed.

Once he was asleep, I headed back on to the golf course with my camera and got some good shots of the nearly full moon. Having been to a planetarium show last night, I realized that Jupiter was also visible and so I took the telescope down to the street and aimed it in a Jovian direction.  Once the planet was in focus, I realized that three of the Galilean moons (Ganymede, Io, and Calisto) were also visible and that I could see some of the gas bands in the planet itself. That’s pretty awesome resolution for a planet that’s about 575 million miles from Earth.

After a while, I turned the telescope back to the Moon and after viewing for a while, heard a voice say, “What are you looking at, can I take a glance?” I looked up to see three women walking down the road towards me. I said, “the moon and sure, take a look!” They each took a turn and when the final one was looking, she was stunned. She had never looked through a telescope before and said that the moon looked “just like it did on TV” among other comments. I was pleased to be able to introduce these ladies to the moon. I turned the scope to Jupiter and they were even more amazed that we could resolve something so far away from Earth. I pointed out the Galilean moons and they were awestruck. One of the ladies even went so far as to say that the experience rocked her world. If only there had been an ISS flyby at the time, she would have been floored.

Being able to share the experience of observing the moon and planets with my family was great. Being able to introduce a stranger to these observations was also awesome. As I sit here writing this, looking up at the moon, I wonder, when will we go back? When will we break the bonds of low earth orbit and get in the business of pushing boundaries again?

I hope it’s soon!

Now that the Soyuz is on a forced hiatus, there is talk of getting the Shuttle program started again to get Americans into space. This is a fallacy. It’s can’t be done. The Shuttle program is over. Getting back into space is important, but the Shuttle isn’t the way to do it. We need to, as Wayne puts it, get out of the Model-T era and into modern era.

The path that we are supposed to be on is that the money formerly used to operate the Shuttle would now be used to develop a new rocket to get us out of low earth orbit and back into the deep space exploration business.

Wayne ended that 2008 blog post by saying, “That horse has left the barn.” He titled his recent post on the same subject, “After the Barn Burned Down.” The Space Shuttle is the only space program I’ve even known. It’s been a part of my life that I’ve been mourning recently because of its end. Much as I hate to say it, the Shuttle program is over, let’s get on with it and get back into deep space.

When the Progress 44 launch failed on August 24th, the single point of failure was activated. The Progress rocket used the same third stage as the manned Soyuz rockets and that was the stage that failed. So, mere weeks before one half of the crew of the ISS was to depart for earth and another three astronauts were to be launched on a Souyz to replace them, all manned space flights are on hold while the failure is investigated. This couldn’t have happened at a worse time. Soyuz spacecraft has an on-orbit lifespan of about 6 months. The crew of Soyuz TMA-21 launched in early April, 2011 and the crew of Soyuz TMA-02M launched in early June. The TMA-21 crew must get back to earth before October and the TMA-02M must return by November. This means that if the Russian investigation into the cause of the failure draws on, it is possible that the station will have to go unmanned for a while. There is not danger to the station if it goes unmanned for a while, as Slate explains. However, if it occurs, the de-crewing will break the 10 year streak of consistent manned spaceflight.

I hope that we will get beyond the point of having only a single point of failure and get back into the business of launching humans in to space. Whether it’s Russia or the United States, humans need to be in the business of getting off Earth.

The chance to sit down and have informal conversation with the people who make our space program happen. At the STS-132 JSC #NASATweetup, our after event was a truly amazing experience. We sat for hours on a porch on a hot Houston night and talked space with astronauts, flight controllers, trainers, public affairs folks, tweetup organizers, and our fellow tweeps. I learned firsthand that that the people who make our space program happen are space geeks just like me. We saw an ISS flyover and a HST flyover. It was wonderful!

I’ve loved the three tweetups that I’ve participated in because I’ve learned so much about our NASA, our manned space program, our unmanned space program, and many other things. I love meeting space tweeps because I learn about what drives people to love exploration. Hanging with space tweeps has made me realize what makes our nation great.

Hanging with space tweeps has also given me some great experiences that I never would have otherwise had. The day after the STS-135 JSC Tweetup, I visited Space Center Houston with @absolutspaceguy, @lynnvr, & @omaflinger. While there, we met Apollo 7 Astronaut Walt Cunningham, who was touring with his family. Col. Cunningham was kind enough to take a picture with us and to sign an Apollo 7 patch.

After that I enjoyed lunch with @lynnvr, & @omaflinger and saw a tweet by @waynehale saying he was on the JSC site signing copies of the book Wings In Orbit. I wasn’t able to get on Site, so I tweeted him and asked if it would be possible to meet him offsite. He was amenable, so we met at the Starbucks across the street from JSC.

We talked to a bit and he mentioned that a lot of NASA folks visit this Starbucks. He headed off to finish his day. Several minutes later, I noticed a man coming in to Starbucks who looked a lot like 4 time shuttle flyer and STS-125 commander Scott Altman. It was indeed him, and he was kind enough to sign my book and let us take a picture.

All in all, hanging with Space Tweeps is awesome!

I previously attended the #NASATweetup at JSC during the STS-132 mission in May of 2010 and had a wonderful time. It was an amazing experience and I didn’t think I would ever have the chance to top it. Well, in late June, NASA announced a tweetup during the STS-135 mission at JSC. I had already done the tweetup and didn’t want to take up a space for someone who had not had the experience. However, there was an enticement in the announcement that made me reconsider. The participants in the STS-135 JSC Tweetup would get to take a flight in the motion based simulator used by Astronauts to train for missions. This was truly a once in a lifetime opportunity because the simulators would be decommissioned the week after the tweetup as there were no more missions to train for because of the end of the Space Shuttle program.  I couldn’t pass this opportunity up. I put in my application on June 28th and awaited the promised response on July 5th.

I’ll spare you the details, but the short version of the story is that I didn’t get a confirmation until Thursday, July 14th at about 0700. The tweetup was scheduled for the follow Tuesday, July 19th, so I had to beat feet to make it happen. Long story short, I was able to get the arrangements made at minimal cost, so on Monday,July 18th I headed to Houston. Arriving late in the evening, I arrived at my hotel and thought I would sleep before the tweetup, but forgot that the Shuttle’s final ever undocking from the ISS would occur early the next morning. I was appalled to find that NASATV wasn’t included in my motels TV line up, so I got the computer running and watched. I watched until Atlantis had safely undocked from the ISS and headed to bed.

Waking up a few hours later, I rounded up my equipment and headed off to JSC. In the parking lot, I looked over the horizon and it didn’t look good. 

Entering the Gilruth Center, I came across some old friends who I had met at previous tweetups; I met new folks who had never been to a NASATweetup before; it was an amazing group of 30 people who were there to geek out on the Shuttle Program. Even my friend Camilla_SDO was there.

I was assigned to the Blue bus, which all knowledgeable people know was the cool bus. We headed off to Building 16, home of the SAIL lab and OV-095. It happened to be across the street from Building 30, home of Mission Control. It was recently named of Christopher Kraft, who literally invented Mission Control. We headed inside to find that against all odds, the majority of the staff was supporting the ongoing STS-135 mission. They were busy analyzing the late inspection data that has been sent down over night and weren’t available to show us around. I want to say that I fully support this allocation of resources. They were able to spare a couple of folks to give us a brief tour and we were able to do a couple of simulated dockings to the ISS.

Here is the RPOP screen used by the Rendezvous Officer in the Mission Control Center to monitor the progress of rendezvous between the orbiter and the ISS.

From here, we went to the Saturn V building. If you’ve never seen a Saturn V rocket before, it’s an amazing experience. Over 300 feet tall, enough power to get men to the moon and designed by engineers using slide rules! It’s an amazing piece of technology!

Look at the size of the bell of one of the five engines in the first stage:

From there we went to Building 17, to visit the food lab where meals are developed for the Shuttle and the ISS. On the way in the building, we came across the official NASA Airlock. When the doors open, you’re on the moon.

The Space Food Systems lab, run by Vickie L. Kloeris,  was awesome. Ms. Kloeris explained the specific requirements and needs of food in space and how that changed when the ISS came online. She had great stories for us and told us how the astronauts select their food. She also talked about the shelf life of space food and how the ISS astronauts are eating food that’s beyond it’s “best if consumed by” dates.

Ms. Kloeris really captivated the group.

Examples of space food:

From there, we headed to the

We were taken into the room of the motion based simulator, which the astronauts, specifically the commanders and pilots, use to train for launches and landings. Sitting on a hydraulic base, the simulator can tilt on its back to simulate launch and, I’m told, does a great job of simulating the actual feeling of launch.

In this photo, the cabin of the motion based simulator is tipped up for launch

The MBS is fitted with a cockpit set up like an orbiter’s and can be used in either in isolation or can be linked into to Mission Control simulations as well.

At the MBS, we had the chance to meet astronaut Clay Anderson, who has done an expedition on the ISS and also was a Mission Specialist on STS-131, which I saw launch from KSC. I was wearing my STS-131 polo shirt, which I’ve worn to al my NASATweetups. Clay noticed the shirt and pointed it out.

In the same building as the Motion Based Simulator is the Fixed Base Simulator. From the outside, it looks like a bunch of blocks put together by my three year old son. On the inside, it’s a full orbiter flight deck, mid-deck, and WCS setup.

Storage bins in the mid-deck from the outside and the inside, as demonstrated by Michael Grabois, a FBS trainer and Space Tweep.

Up on the flight deck, I got to climb into the Commander’s seat and take a look out the “window.”

Here are the CDR’s screens. Engine stats on the left and flight instrumentation on the right.

On the aft flight deck, our neighbors to the north are represented on the control panel for the SRMS, otherwise known as the CanadaArm.

Michael then took us into the trainer for the Waste Collection System, otherwise known as the space toilet! I was the guinea pig and demonstrator. There are more of these pictures on my flickr set, so I’ll just give you a single example of my embarassment.

Ater the WCS training, it was my group’s turn to fly the MBS. We climbed in and participated in a simulated launch and landing. I was the flight engineer and got to make callouts for important mission milestones. It was awesome. Here was the view from my seat:

Here I am in my seat, preparing for launch!

In the hallway of the building, there is a mission plaque from every shuttle mission from the Approach and Landing tests to STS-135. Coincidentally, the plaques for STS-51L (Challenger) and STS-107 (Columbia) are right across the hall from each other.

Riding on the MBS was an experience I will never forget. It was beyond description, a ride I will never forget, and unfortunately, one that few others have had the chance to experience.

Form there, we headed to the JSC cafeteria for lunch. While in line for my burger, I met an ISS propulaion engineer and we talked about moving the ISS as well as the photos taken by the Souyz crew on STS-134 and the stack rotation for the STS-135 shuttle flyaround. It was awesome to chat space with an actual rocket scientist. Others in our group saw STS-125 Astronaut Mike Massimino.

After lunch, we went to the neutral buoyancy laboratory, a 6.2 million gallon pool used by Astronauts to train for spacewalk. It is the most clear pool I’ve ever seen and the water is completely filtered every 19 hours. The pool is 202 feet (62 m) in length, 102 feet (31 m) wide, and 40 feet 6 inches (12.34 m) deep. It’s truly amazing!

Here’s the full sized underwater mockup of the Shuttle payload bay

There was training going on in the pool while we were there and one of the astronauts came to the surface to speak with his trainers. It was awesome to see an EMU in use!

We then headed to Building 30, Mission Control Center. Honestly, I would be happy with a Mission Control Tweetup, so it was cool to head over there! We started in the viewing room for the White Flight Control Room, where the ongoing shuttle mission was being controlled. It was an honor just to be there. We met Flight Director Ed VanCise (aka @Carbon_Flight), Rendezvous Officer Sara Ruiz (aka @saroy), and NASA Public Affairs Officer Josh Byerly. It was a great experience, though we were kind of in a ruch.

Just as Sarah started to talk to us about how the Flight Control room and Flight controllers work, we got s surprise call, FROM SPACE.  Astronaut Ron Garan (@Astro_Ron) called from the International Space Station to say hi and that he hoped we were having a good tweetup. (Sarah describes the experience of being interrupted on her blog.) It was amazing because it was so extraordinary to be talking to space, but we were doing it in such a mundane manner. Ron used a IP phone on the ISS to call the mobile phone of one of our hosts. It was amazing. One of my fellow tweeps, Charles Atkeison (@absolutspaceguy), caught most of the call on video. His report on the call was featured on CNN iReport. I’m working on getting the video embedded, but until I do, here’s the link http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-639195

I’m sad to say that most of my photos in the White Flight Control Room didn’t come out too well, because I was shaking from the coolness of just having talked to space and the fact we couldn’t use a flash. My WFCR photos from the STS-132 NASATweetup are better. From there, we went to the FCR2, where many of the Gemini, Apollo, and early shuttle missions were controlled. I sat in the seat the Flight Director Gene Kranz sat in when men first landed on the moon. There’s a scene in Apollo 13, where Ed Harris, playing Mr. Kranz, says, “All Right People, Listen Up!” This is my impression of that scene. Note the huge smile on my face.

While in building 30, we walked down a hall by the Mission Evaluation Room. This is the big back room that is used by controllers to work problems and make sure things are going according to plan. I like this room, among other reasons, because of the flags…

 After Building 30, we headed to Building 9, otherwise known as the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility. My friend Lucie Delheimer (@lucied_inthesky) works in the building came down to visit us. We were shown around the ISS mockups by Astronaut Scott Kelly, who has flown on two Space Shuttle missions and was the commander on the ISS. He also showed us the Soyuz mockup in the building. It was very cool. Comparing the size of the shuttle to the size of a Soyuzis like comparing a Hummer to a Smart Car. Where the Shuttle has room to move around, the Soyuz is cramped. It’s a sharp contrast. We also were shown a couple of mockup of the Orion capsule, which is the next generation US Space Capsule. It was pretty cool!

One of the most moving things of the whole day was seeing the tribute to the lost crews in the SVMF.

All in all it was a great day! I enjoyed the opportunity tremendously and was so excited to be chosen. All of the participants chose to sign the welcome poster as a thank you to our hosts!

Oh yeah, I got to meet one of my twitter heros Sara Hemenway (@6thgradersrule). She rocks!

See my full Flickr set at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jotulloch/sets/72157627266641536/

I want a world where humans are explorers. I want a world where the sky isn’t the limit. I want a world where the decade long continuous presence in space becomes a century long continuous presence in space. I want a world where nations work together to better humanity.

I want a world in which our political leaders recognize that no money is spent in space, it’s all spent on earth. I want them to realize that investments in space and NASA create technologies that we use every day. I want them to realize that space exploration is worthwhile and I want them to allocate more than the current 1/2 of 1% of the Federal Budget to Space.

I want a world where engineers, technicians, controllers, and other people who make space travel possible are truly valued…

Without further ado, here’s the video!

I found myself desperately hoping the launch would go off as planned while, at the same time, hoping that the launch would be scrubbed. If we scrubbed, we would get to come back and do this again. Instead, Atlantis is in orbit and the final countdown has begun.

I was lucky enough to watch the launch with about 200 people who came to the Chabot Space & Science Center. While it certainly wasn’t as cool as being on the Space Coast, watching the launch with a community of folks was a tremendous experience.

The weather forecasts were grim, but across my stream came a tweet saying that the Launch Director thought there was a 60/40 chance of going today. The T-9 hold was painful, especially during the launch status verification, when Houston Flight asked to be polled last. Once we got through the polls and Mr. Moses announced that there was a waiver for RTLS weather, we were all excited! The clock started and counted down to T-31 seconds when we normally would have heard, “CGLS Auto Sequence start” and instead we heard a call for a hold.

Who outside of the engineering teams knew that a beanie cap sensor could hold up a launch. The crowd in the theatre certainly didn’t. There were big sighs in the crowd thinking there would be no launch today. However, the launch team did their job, handling the problem with ease and the count resumed! Once the count started again, everyone was at the edge of their seats. We all counted down the final 10 seconds aloud. Then,

LAUNCH! The SRBs lit off and there was no stopping the ride to orbit. It was 8 minutes of joy an agony all rolled in to one. We cheered at SRB sep and cheered the loudest at MECO. The 200 people there spanned all categories, but there were many kids… Parents brought their kids because they waned them to see this important moment in history. I brought my son because I wanted him to share this moment with other people. I wanted him to see that there is a community of people, not just his parents, who are interested in space exploration. I read in an article about the event that someone brought a copy of the newspaper they saved from the day STS-1 launch in 1981. That’s amazing…

See Oakland North, KGO Radio, and KCBS Radio stories on the gathering

It was an experience that I will always remember!

STS-135: The final flight of the Space Shuttle from Spacevidcast on Vimeo.

To see it in its native habitat, click here.

For the record, Discovery, the fleet leader, is the best orbiter. Don’t believe anything else you hear.