I <3 #SpaceTweeps

There are many wonderful things about Twitter that have surprised me. I was highly reluctant to join for a long time, with my friend @souphead constantly nudging me (in a very nice way) to try it out. The moment I got on there, though, I started finding NASA's official twitterers, which soon led me to "meeting" some SpaceTweeps. The two subsequent shuttle launches were made much more fun by chatting with some of them and, at other times, I started learning a lot more about the space program by vigilantly reading their links and checking out their behind-the-scenes photography. Such fun!

But nothing can compare to last night. I'd planned to watch LCROSS crash into the moon by myself, as we have NASA TV here and, frankly, it was awfully early in the morning for this night owl. I'd planned to sleep and my partner promised to wake me up early enough to catch the launch. Then I went on Twitter for what was supposed to be one last time and all thoughts of sleep went away very quickly as I found out a bunch of people were planning to stay up all night.

We started a chat room hours before the impact was scheduled and made sport of looking at the NASA, LCROSS, and Moon trending topics and sharing the wackiest comments by the sort we dubbed "the zombie people." I would mention their insane thoughts except they've already given voice to them far too much (and many other blogs have covered them). The point is, here were a bunch of smart, funny, like-minded people who decided that it would be more fun to laugh at these insane notions than to cry over them, even though I think we all had a few choked up moments. Gagging moments may be more like it, come to think of it.

As the hours wound down the conversation slowed while we got sucked into the various broadcasts. When the plume we were told to expect failed to occur we experienced an even more special moment, disappointed there wasn't more of a show to watch but excited we had shared in history, made all the sweeter by sharing it with enthusiasts all over the world.

I haven't had so much fun staying up all night in a long time!

None of it would have happened without Twitter or the Space Tweep Society. They've brought together everyone from professionals to people like me, who love the space program simply as citizens. If you support the space program and astronomy in general, please join up! If I learned anything from last night it's that we need to band together if we have any hope of enlightening others to the value of science and study. I don't know if we can reach the zombie people, but let's at least try to get everyone else!

Bake Sale for NASA

I haven't posted any of my music or lyrics on here because I have been writing anonymously and I have had an issue with people trying to steal my intellectual property in the past. However, when Jen Scheer (@flyingjenny), one of my favorite SpaceTweeps (appropriate, as it turns out she started the group) asked to see the lyrics to the following song I realized that maybe it's not such a bad thing to mix these parts of my life. In fact, I feel like I'm starting to become CraftLass more and more in real life as well as online, since I've been meeting people in person who I first found online for the first time in years. Maybe that should become my new stage name as well as pen name...?

I also am quite proud of this song and think it's timely, so I'd rather have it spreading around regardless of if I ever make a dime on it than keep it to myself. I performed it last night for the first time and the response was very positive, with a few people going so far as to say it made them think about their own feelings about NASA and funding. I tried to make it as accurate as possible, using information from Wayne Hale's blog, NASA's website in general, and posts and tweets by SpaceTweeps as my inspiration. Who am I kidding? The song popped into my head and pretty much wrote itself while I was reading those things and watching the Augustine hearings more than the other way around.

Okay, here goes:

Bake Sale for NASA

We sent men to the moon because of some lines

In a speech that inspires to this day

We learn more about Earth from orbit

Than we can in any other way

Yet we spend and we spend and we spend and we spend

On corporate welfare that will never end

Programs that waste more than they create

Yet we’re happy to let NASA deflate

Chorus:

So let’s hold a bake sale for NASA

Show our love for a program that actually works

The cookies are sure to be out of this world

We could even have astros as clerks

Give folks a chance to learn first-hand

Why we need these adventures in space

How it affects them directly at home

And elevates the whole human race

A very large chunk of what sets us apart

Is our driving need to explore

Humans are best when we’re trying to test

Our limits and find we have more

The more that we learn the less that we know

So further on still we must go

To answer the questions that in the past

We didn’t even know to ask

Chorus:

So let’s hold a bake sale for NASA

Show our love for a program that actually works

The cookies are sure to be out of this world

We could even have astros as clerks

Give folks a chance to learn first-hand

Why we need these adventures in space

How it affects them directly at home

And elevates the whole human race

Bridge:

To turn this whole endeavor over

To private investors and other lands

Would be giving up the greatest power

We have in our nation’s hands

Some skeptics say we should keep funds at bay

Until we have fed everyone

But we produce more food than ever before

Because of what NASA has done

Nearly every invention created for space

On Earth has found a useful place

Saving some lives and improving many more

Like we’ve never seen before

Chorus:

So let’s hold a bake sale for NASA

Show our love for a program that actually works

The cookies are sure to be out of this world

We could even have astros as clerks

Give folks a chance to learn first-hand

Why we need these adventures in space

How it affects them directly at home

And elevates the whole human race

Bridge:

In these days where folks are always trying

To take real science out of schools

We need to step up our efforts

Or become a nation of fools

I could go on for days extolling the ways

Investment in NASA makes sense

But I have only this song to convince those who are wrong

And think it’s a wasteful expense

I will dare to say it’s our greatest success

Less than 1% is hardly excess

In a budget that keeps us all in debt

At least here we can see what we get

Chorus:

So let’s hold a bake sale for NASA

Show our love for a program that actually works

The cookies are sure to be out of this world

We could even have astros as clerks

Give folks a chance to learn first-hand

Why we need these adventures in space

How it affects them directly at home

And elevates the whole human race

Human race

Humans in space!!

(If you like these lyrics, I'm talking to a producer right now about trying to get at least a simple acoustic version recorded quickly and will post it here when it's ready, I promise!)

Also posted at the Space Tweep Society Blog.

A Childhood Interest Becoming Adult Obsession

Twitter changes things. It seems mind-blowing that little messages like that can open up worlds of opportunity to learn, grow, and even meet people who become real-life friends. You can target your interests or just click around and see what catches your eye, serendipitous follows.

Most of us are interested in a lot of things as children (at least I hope that's true of most people), and of course, the question of, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" usually gets a different answer depending on the year, month, day, or even moment it gets asked by some well-meaning adult. If you caught me at the right time in my childhood you would have heard that I either wanted to be an astronaut or, really, any position at NASA would do. I would have also been happy to be an astrophysicist at any form of observatory. As long as it involved things out of this world, I suppose, it fit into my hopes and dreams.

In the intervening years that dream fell away completely. I even thought I had grown to hate science for a time. It's easy to look back and realize that I had the misfortune of encountering really bad science teachers (one of my chem teachers didn't even know Avogadro's number. He said it was around 6x10²³ but, when pressed, had no idea of what came after the decimal point. Still makes me want to cry in frustration). In every other way I had a phenomenal education but everything I learned about science came from reading and visiting the American Museum of Natural History. I'm sure being female didn't help, either, but no one cared about the sexism of science classrooms in those days.

Thank goodness (and T.R.) for the museum. As an adult, I have attended many a lecture there and, despite having only a G.E.D. have managed to cobble together quite a bit of knowledge between the amazing speakers and books they led me to. My childhood dreams started coming back to me, but this time in a mature way where the dream includes hard work, several degrees, and paying my dues even if I'm 50 or more when I get to break into it. Who needs to retire, anyway?

Then I found NASA TV. Ahh, the wonder of seeing Hubble images, day-to-day moments of life in the ISS, and whatever random stuff they decided to broadcast. The trouble is, it's hard to know when what you want to see is on as opposed to the educational programming reminiscent of early public broadcast shows.

So, how does Twitter come into all of this? Well, I joined purely to get in touch with an old friend and because another friend kept hounding me to. It took me about 3 hours to find @NASA and that was the moment I got hooked. Now I'm following a whole bunch of NASA workers and get up-to-the-moment updates and insights on what's happening with the whole space program and particularly the shuttle missions. I also know just when to turn on NASA TV now, very handy. Better yet, actual astronauts have answered my questions!

So, there you have it folks. I am a bigger geek than I usually let on, and it's not just in the fun used-to-be-a-sound-engineer way. Now you know.

Tonight I sit here, anxiously clicking refresh on my Twitter home page for any scrap of information about Discovery and aching to make my boyfriend turn off the NFL channel in favor of NASA, even plotting with my father about how to get our butts to a launch before the shuttle program ends.

I would like to send out enormous thanks to everyone at NASA who has gotten this girl hooked, especially @astro_mike, @astro_127, @astro_jose (on his first space flight tonight!), @absolutespacegrl, and @MarkKirkman. You (and a few others that got lost in my excitement) are providing a wonderful service to all of us who believe in the space program but can only press our noses to the glass. Not to mention all the hearty laughs you've all provided!