A week or so after the TV station read a bit of my media release, the local paper, the Knoxville News Sentinel, called me. A reporter called this morning before I went to work and interviewed me. He said they were going to run a story now, with a follow-up while I am at the tour/launch. I only wish NASATweetup had released the agenda so I’d have more to tell him. If I’m going to meet Neil Armstrong or something like that, I’d like to know now. Rumor has it that Nichelle Nichols of Star Trek is coming.
I don’t think mine is just a story of a super cool prize won by a local woman. NASA picked tweeters to come to the launch so we could tweet about it. The story is that anyone who cares to follow my tweets or blog can also have a front row seat, or as best I can provide. If each of the 150 attendees has 1000 followers, that’s 150,000 people turned in to the play-by-play details of launch day. And 150 different angles on what to cover. What an honor to be in that role. And what a responsibility!
Makes me feel guilty for two or three light days of blogging. I haven’t even touched on the two shuttle losses, an intro to the ISS, some hints on good locations to watch the launch if you don’t have Causeway tickets, and a dozen other ideas I have floating around for blog posts. Get to work, Renna!
On that line of thought, at the actual launch itself, when a million cameras will be focused on the pad, (well, hopefully on the pad), I’m thinking about using a second camera to turn around and get a shot of the crowd. All those cameras, all those smiling upturned faces. It’s almost like, instead of watching the bride walk down the aisle, watching the groom’s face during that time.
Meanwhile, the FRR is ongoing. I’m reading the tweets from NASA and if I thought I knew what a Flight Readiness Review would be like, I was wrong. It is very thorough, as they are in the third hour. Here are the last four tweets:
