Atlantis STS-132 Launch NASA Tweetup

NASA Tweetup tent

Last week I was lucky enough to participate in the STS-132 NASA Tweetup for the last Atlantis launch. Less than a week before the launch on May 14 I was still not sure whether I'll be able to go for various reasons. I finally had all my ducks in a row - NASA confirmation, airline tickets, hotel and car - only a few days before the launch.

While waiting in Denver for my delayed flight to Florida I met Mike Petrone, a former Phantom pilot who took his wife and grandson to see the launch. In the early 1970s, Mike went through preliminary astronaut training including, among other things, parabolic flights. Suffice to say that the nick-name Vomit-Comet given to airplanes performing parabolic flights seems more apt than before. He eventually didn't make it into the astronaut core but his interest in space remained.

Atlantis - STS-132 - NASA Tweetup

I am currently sitting at the Denver International Airport, gate B25, waiting for my delayed flight (hopefully the only delay I'll have this trip), on my way to see the third to last shuttle launch in Florida next week. I am fortunate enough to be one of the lucky 150 that will take part of the NASA STS-132 Tweet-Up.

For those of you who don't know what a NASATweetup is, click http://www.nasa.gov/connect/tweetup.html. You can see who are the lucky 150 people on twitter at http://twitter.com/nasatweetup/sts-132-launch.

For all of my 149 fellow tweeterers (tweeters?), welcome to Spacepirations. I hope you read this and comment below.

I intend to write a post tomorrow evening after a full day entailing a tour of Kennedy Space Center and meeting some fascinating NASA people and all of the other members of this tweetup.

See you in Florida!

Surprises at an Airplane Museum

Pueblo Weisbrod Aircraft Museum

Pueblo is a town in Colorado of a little over 100,000 people, incorporated 135 years ago. It was one of our stops on a recent road trip to Taos, New Mexico. We went to the Weisbrod Aircraft Museum based on a flier at the hotel, not knowing exactly what's there. Apart from airplanes, the museum held a few space related surprises for us.

We arrived and were greeted by two veteran pilots, one of which took us on a private tour. It was great to get a tour from a person who actually flew many of the types of planes on display rather than the usual tour guide, hired, trained and synthetic. The museum is placed in a small airport which used to be a central U.S. Air-Force base in Word War II. He told us about each plane and about other artifacts on display - various American uniforms, Russian uniforms and even a huge Nazi flag in pristine condition captured in 1945, which as a Jewish person who had parents that were lucky enough to survive made me clench.

Peachy nose-art

B-29 at the Pueblo Aircraft Museum

At the center of the exhibit hall is the "Peachy" B-29, the same kind of airplane which dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is an impressive four-engine airplane from the time airplane nose-art was common, with anything from cartoons to nudity, as immortalized in this web site, created specifically for that purpose.

One of the surprises was in the form of NASA rockets in a nice cabinet. The reason it's there is for a rocket building club hosted at the museum. I think the connection and continuity between old aircrafts, some dating back to the beginning of the twentieth century, to rocketry and space, is important, as for some reason, many realize the global scale changes airplanes have made in our daily lives, but still don't fully grasp how much space technologies improve our lives now and will continue to do so in the future.

Plaque

Gene Rodenberry's uniform

The biggest space related surprise was the U.S. Army Air Force uniform as worn by Captain Eugene Wesley Rodenberry, known to anyone with an ounce of space enthusiasm in them as Gene Rodenberry, the creator of Star Trek.

Mr. Rodenberry visited the museum himself and donated the uniform, which is now on display as a memorial.

We enjoyed visiting the museum and recommend it to anyone passing through Colorado, if only to get a glimpse of aviation history, be reminded of the low points of the human race in the last century as well as the victories enabling and protecting our future.

The Govrin Family

Here we are -- from the left - myself, Yotam and Yanir, our eight year old twins, Sofia my wife and Liam who's three.
Incidentally, this is during that visit to the Kennedy Space Center I mentioned in my first post.

I was actually here once before, in 1990 as a 17 year old high school student, but I think this time around I understood more of what this place embodies and means to humanity and myself.