Just got home from an exhausting week in Florida, touring Kennedy Space Center and viewing the SpaceX CRS6 space station resupply mission.
Will amplify this more soon, but basically I've been spending a lot of my hobby time with an obsession with space that started in 1962 when I was ten years old. It's why I'm an engineer, even though I've never worked directly for aerospace companies. SpaceX was the spark that got me fascinated again.
I discovered a poorly-managed Facebook group formed for SpaceX enthusiasts, even though I almost exclusively use web forums like this for discussing technical issues. But FB has a huge pool of noobs who need guidance and simpl;er explanations, and that's one thing I love to do. So I decided to try to spiff up the FB group and get rid of trolls and spammers and revitalize it. After a month of schmoozing the originator, who was overwhelmed by managing a 4000 person group all alone, he made me an admin. Within two weeks, I booted the trolls, screened out hundreds of spammers, recruited three other admins from the main web forum I hang out in for high level rocket science talk (nasaspaceflight.com) and we're now up to 11,000 members. I have many friends who work there and have gone up to Hawthorne for factory tours not open to the public.
NASA runs media events and behind-the-scene tours for social media people, not just traditional press, as an outreach proggram to engage a different and often younger audience, than normal media. When they announced a NASASocial event for the CRS6 SpaceX launch, I jumped on the application process after my wife prodded me. It was a true bucket list possibility. How many 63 year old (teenager at heart!) space nuts have never seen a launch in person even though trying multiple times?
My social media credentials from Trailvoy got me press access to a SEMA show a few years ago, so I wrote the required essay about how many folks read my articles and stuff on the SpaceX group, etc, etc. Out of 350 applicants, I was one of the 50 chosen. Off to Florida for a week! Spent three days doing all possible public tours of the Space Center - historical locations and launch pads - inside the Launch Control Center - new facilities being constructed for the Space Launch System (SLS) the next huge NASA-designed rocket. Not as interesting as SpaceX, but all space is interesting to me.
Then three days of NASASocial access, inconceivably fascinating and unique. Many NASA staffers haven't been the places they took us. Inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) that's now closed to the public. TO THE FREAKIN" Launch Complex 40, where the unfueled Falcon9 vehicle was sitting before the weather-scrubbbed launch attempt on Monday, and to a newly-authorized launch viewing area just over 2 miles from the pad.
More details later. I have to get to work soon and these will have to do.
There's a ROCKET here!
This was my view of the launch with only a 300mm telephoto. The flames were far brighter than any picture or TV ever conveyed. The sound will be a lifetime memory - the chest thumping bass, the high frequency crackling, none of it perfectly reproduced by any IMAX launch vide, and I've seen them all.
Will amplify this more soon, but basically I've been spending a lot of my hobby time with an obsession with space that started in 1962 when I was ten years old. It's why I'm an engineer, even though I've never worked directly for aerospace companies. SpaceX was the spark that got me fascinated again.
I discovered a poorly-managed Facebook group formed for SpaceX enthusiasts, even though I almost exclusively use web forums like this for discussing technical issues. But FB has a huge pool of noobs who need guidance and simpl;er explanations, and that's one thing I love to do. So I decided to try to spiff up the FB group and get rid of trolls and spammers and revitalize it. After a month of schmoozing the originator, who was overwhelmed by managing a 4000 person group all alone, he made me an admin. Within two weeks, I booted the trolls, screened out hundreds of spammers, recruited three other admins from the main web forum I hang out in for high level rocket science talk (nasaspaceflight.com) and we're now up to 11,000 members. I have many friends who work there and have gone up to Hawthorne for factory tours not open to the public.
NASA runs media events and behind-the-scene tours for social media people, not just traditional press, as an outreach proggram to engage a different and often younger audience, than normal media. When they announced a NASASocial event for the CRS6 SpaceX launch, I jumped on the application process after my wife prodded me. It was a true bucket list possibility. How many 63 year old (teenager at heart!) space nuts have never seen a launch in person even though trying multiple times?
My social media credentials from Trailvoy got me press access to a SEMA show a few years ago, so I wrote the required essay about how many folks read my articles and stuff on the SpaceX group, etc, etc. Out of 350 applicants, I was one of the 50 chosen. Off to Florida for a week! Spent three days doing all possible public tours of the Space Center - historical locations and launch pads - inside the Launch Control Center - new facilities being constructed for the Space Launch System (SLS) the next huge NASA-designed rocket. Not as interesting as SpaceX, but all space is interesting to me.
Then three days of NASASocial access, inconceivably fascinating and unique. Many NASA staffers haven't been the places they took us. Inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) that's now closed to the public. TO THE FREAKIN" Launch Complex 40, where the unfueled Falcon9 vehicle was sitting before the weather-scrubbbed launch attempt on Monday, and to a newly-authorized launch viewing area just over 2 miles from the pad.
More details later. I have to get to work soon and these will have to do.
There's a ROCKET here!
This was my view of the launch with only a 300mm telephoto. The flames were far brighter than any picture or TV ever conveyed. The sound will be a lifetime memory - the chest thumping bass, the high frequency crackling, none of it perfectly reproduced by any IMAX launch vide, and I've seen them all.