Whew! Busy two weeks.

Tweetup Lineup for Wednesday, May 19

This was my first “mission tweetup” at JSC. Wonderful group of 91 space tweeps, with eight foreign nationals representing five countries: UK, Hong Kong, Australia, India, and Sweden. We started out at Space Center Houston @SpaceCenterHou first thing in the morning. We featured NASA’s very cool Buzzroom on one of the three huge screens! You can see it on the left screen in the pic below.

Buzzroom visually aggregates the social media conversation (tweets, links, images, and videos) so that anyone can go to buzzroom.nasa.gov to take part in the space buzz – even without a Twitter account. Very slick! Thank you Jesse Thomas and team for building it for us!!!

Give Buzzroom a try. You’ll luv, luv, LUV it!

We started the morning with introductions by NASA’s John Yembrick who likened each tweetup slot to Willie Wonka’s Golden Ticket. And so it is for the lucky 91 space tweeps who sat eagerly in their seats, waiting for the magic to happen. They didn’t wait long. Q & A with astronaut Ron Garan @Astro_Ronwho tweeted answers live – but remotely using his iPhone in the passenger seat of traveling vehicle. Don’t you love the freedom technology gives us to stay connected from anywhere (with a cell tower)?

Note: You may remember me writing about Ron in March, when he represented MannaEnergy as one of the ten featured innovators in NASA’s sustainability event, LAUNCH:Water! He’s doing amazing things on and off the planet to make the world a better place.

Johnson Space Center Deputy Director and astronaut Ellen Ochoa welcomed space tweeps to the Center.

Our next speaker shared powerpoint charts about how NASA made it possible for astronauts to tweet directly from space. At this point, however, I glazed over. Powerpoint does that to me. But I must say, our space tweeps geeked out. While they were absorbing his charts, here’s what I saw: FAIL WHALE!

Astronaut @Astro_Jeff Williams spoke about his time as Space Station Commander and narrated a video with mission clips. Hint: Don’t accept if Jeff offers to give you a haircut. He graciously stayed behind to sign autographs and pose for pictures. Nice guy.

We broke for lunch, then loaded onto busses and trams for a tour of Mission Control to hear from Space Station Flight Director Ed Van Cise @Carbon_Flight. Look! Tweeps are waving at you from Mission Control in pic below. Don’t they look happy? Below that is a pic of Ed sharing stories about how we do business…and how he came to NASA. Behind Ed on the large screens: live views of an STS-132 spacewalk.

Astronauts @Astro_Clay Anderson and Steve Robinson tag-teamed small groups of tweeps during our tour of the Shuttle/Station mockup facility, where the astronauts train for space duty. By chance, I got to watch STS-134 Greg Chamitoff and Drew Feustel in the middle of a training simulation. Their flight moved from July to November, at the earliest, due to a payload issue with Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS).

Here we are mugging for the camera(s)…again!

Next up: Sonny Carter Training facility, or Neutral Bouyancy Lab, where astronauts train underwater — the closest we can get simulating the zero-g environment in space for training with large equipment. Life-sized mockups of space hardware live inside the tank, just waiting for humans to come play. We just missed a training run with Astronaut Kevin Ford, Danny Olivas, Canadian Jeremy Hansen, and Jack Fischer. (Below is my photo of a photo on the wall.)

NASA tweetups are all about sharing inside scoop, granting behind-closed-doors access. Participants get to be part of our space family. And how cool is that?

The JSC tweetup gave tweeps extraordinary access to our astronaut corps, who graciously volunteered to spend time on and off duty. In addition to our speakers during the day, astronauts Steve Robinson, Dan Burbank, Greg “Ray J” Johnson, and the Kelly boys, Mark @ShuttleCDRKelly and Scott @StationCDRKelly, all dropped by to hang with the tweeps — who were THRILLED beyond measure. And to top off a very successful day, we witnessed a flyover of Atlantis docked with Space Station. My first time to see it. EVER!

In addition to meeting all my new space tweep buds, I also got to spend time with NASA tweeps I’ve met in the Twittersphere. Gotta’ love this brave new social space frontier. I didn’t meet everyone on the list below, but I WILL! Just give me time. (I finally met Holly Griffith, one of my first NASA space tweeps!)You can follow the JSC Ambassadors on Twitter.

• Lucie Delheimer @LucieD_inthesky
• Holly Griffith @absolutspacegrl
• Cindy Mahler @txflygirl
• Sarah Graybeal Ruiz @saroy
• Michael Grabois @mgraobois
• Alicia Llewellyn @adllewellyn
• Leslie Ringo @i_Leslie
• Erge Edgu-Fry @edgufry
• Joel Walker @joelwalker
• James McClellan @jbmccl
• Nicholas Skytland @skytland
• Mana Vautier @spacekiwi

Special thanks to Michael Grabois @mgrabois for meeting me early the following morning for a tour of the Shuttle Motion Base Trainer, Aft Deck trainer, and the famous space potty. I even tried the “positional training.” Watch the Mike Massimino “Behind the Scenes-Space Potty” video for more info. (Yes, I have a pic sitting on the Shuttle potty, but that’s reserved for Facebook!)

Thumbs up to Amiko Kauderer and her team in Houston for putting on a good show!

Crosspost on BethBeck’s blog.

Every ending is a new beginning.

Sometimes, though, this concept can be hard to accept. Personally and professionally. Take the end of our beloved Space Shuttle program, for example. Only three flights left. EVER!

My sister Aimee recently reminded me how she and Daddy watched Columbia lift off on April 12, 1981. She remembers him marveling that we could actually launch a rocket from Earth and fly it back to the planet like an airplane. The concept was so unbelievable at the time.

We take it for granted today.

I don’t recall the launch at all. But, I remember the STS-1 landing two days later. I worked at the University of Texas Ex-Students’ Association in Austin. We gathered around the conference table to watch Columbia land. I remember how cool it was to meet STS-1 John Young and Bob Crippin for the first time a few years later. They were the first humans to put their lives on the line and strap themselves onto the Shuttle stack for launch.

But then again, every astronaut who has ever flown on a rocket ship takes a leap of faith — each time we ignite the engines.

Yes, the fleet of amazing reusable winged vehicles served us well over the last two decades (with the exception of our tragic loss of the Challenger and Columbia crew and vehicles on two missions: STS-51-L and STS-107). We don’t relish mothballing the remaining three vehicles: Atlantis, Discovery andEndeavour. But think about the exorbitant cost of upgrades. Cost alone makes the close-out decision for NASA managers so much easier than for those on the outside looking in.

Let’s face it, many of us are mourning the end of the program. And that’s ok. Grief is a reasonable human response. We love to watch our winged vehicles soar into the air, breaking gravity’s grasp on humanity. Those of us fortunate enough to witness a Shuttle launch live, love to feel the ground-shaking rumble and the roar of the engines. Some have even seen the night-sky turn to day as the vehicle propels to the heavens above.

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s a Space Shuttle!!!

(Sorry Superman. We’ve got the real thing. You’re only fiction.)

So what happens next? What follows the Space Shuttle program? Many ask. Many are angry and confused. I don’t have the answers. Just know that NASA folks are furiously working to fill in the blanks. (We’ll fly on Soyuz spacecraft to Station in the meantime.) Beyond that, stay tuned. No comfort for thousands of workers who made house payments, put food on the table, and paid school expenses off Shuttle-related paychecks. I get it. This post-Shuttle “new beginning” must feel like a black hole, where everything they know is disappearing into a powerful vortex outside their control. NASA has been planning this for years, but it doesn’t make the end of the program any easier.

We humans don’t like change, do we?

It’s uncomfortable. Messy, at times. We often prefer the certainty of misery over the misery of uncertainty. That’s why we stay in dead-end jobs or in joyless relationships. We’re funny like that. When change comes, we fight it, dig in our heels, complain to anyone who will listen. Does that sound at all familiar?

But with every new beginning, comes new hope for a better tomorrow.

If we can only let go of those things we cling tightly to, we might have two arms free to embrace this scary, unknown new thing — sometimes called a fresh start.

Here are a few ways to face change head on. Our Goal: Influence Change!

1. Think creatively.
2. Use the same tools in new ways.
3. Find new tools to make old ways new.
4. Look at a problem upside down and right side up.
5. Deconstruct to reconstruct.
6. Make change your own.
7. Sculpt your world into something better than ever existed before.

Who knows, you might like tomorrow better than today! Really, it could happen.

BTW: The next launch, STS-132, is scheduled for May 14. We’ll be having our second Shuttle Launch tweetup at the Kennedy Space Center and a mission tweetup at the Johnson Space Center. Stay-tuned for stories about the launch, mission, and space tweeps.

If you have stories to share about where you were and how you felt with the first Space Shuttle left Earth (IF you were born), feel free to post them as comments.

Crosspost on Bethbeck’s blog.

Onboard Discovery, three female astronauts: NASA’s Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger and Stephanie Wilson and Naoko Yamazaki of Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. They will join Space Station Expedition 23 crewmember Tracy Caldwell Dyson.

Four women in space at the same time! How cool is that?!?

Naoko will tweet during the mission. You can follow @Astro_Naoko in English AND Japanese. Space Station is like our Space United Nations (S.U.N) with multiple nationalities and languages.

Not only did we launch three female astronauts into space onboard a rocketship this morning to join the fourth on Space Station, but we also launched our NASA Deputy Lori Garver into the Twittersphere with her first tweet from launch at the Kennedy Space Center. You can follow her tweets @Lori_Garver.

In fact, one of Lori’s first tweets inspired this blogpost.

Lori also launched her Facebook fan page this morning. NASA’s social media presence ROCKets!

So, girls out there in the universe: Take hope. Aim high. Work hard. Never let a little “no” stop you. Your WORLD awaits you, as we have proof today.

Crosspost on GovLoop and BethBeck’s Blog.

Innovator Stephen Kennedy Smith: Verticrop. “Large-Scale Vertical Hydroponic Ag System”

Innovator Shahram Javey: Aquacue. “Water: Tapped and Untapped”

Innovator Dr. Marc van Iersel: “Affordable Soil Moisture Sensors”

Innovator Dr. Julien J. Harou: “HydroPlatform”

Astronaut Ron Garan: “Manna Energy Projects in Rwanda” — on his own time, not as an official NASA rep.

Innovator “Speed Dating” Impact Rotations:

Before heading off to the reception and dinner at the Kennedy Space Center Rocket Garden, the amazing Dr. Anil Gupta spoke on “Water, Wisdom and Well Being: Learning from Grassroots.” He told a wonderful story about the need to empty ourselves before we can be filled. Great advice for our innovators as they met with thought leaders in the impact rotations. We realized, after the fact, that he should have been our kick-off speaker to inspire us with humility and the possibilities of the smallest kernal of innovation at the grassroots level. I had the great fortune to sit with him at dinner. Now I can’t wait to travel to India to “walk” with him through the villages and honor the small innovations he finds among the people.

NASA’s Mr. Space Station, Mark Uhran, spoke to us at dinner on the topic of “Water Far and Near.” I’ll post a link as soon as we get his remarks up on theLaunch.org website. I was inspired and awed by his remarks on the importance of water in the universe and why it’s important for NASA to follow the “water of life.”

“Water lies at the very foundation of NASA’s reason for being. The search for life in the universe is a search for water, becase life, at least as we know it, cannot exist without water.” NASA’s Mark Uhran.

Thanks Mark! Wow!

We capped off the evening (and Mark’s talk) with a toast to water — with shot glasses of recycled waste water from NASA trials at the Johnson Space Center. NASA’s Marybeth Edeen brought the water with her from Houston. Marybeth, you ROCKet!

Here’s to WATER — on and OFF the planet!

Crosspost on BethBeck’s blog.

We started the day with Lori Garver, NASA’s Deputy Administrator and LAUNCH Water Host.

Majora Carter: Welcome

Peter Gleick, President and Co-Founder Pacific Institute, “21st Century Water: The Role of Technology and Innovation”

Innovator Mark Tonkin, DTI-r: “Subsurface Vapor Transfer Irrigation”

Innovator Andrew Tinka, UC Berkeley: “Floating Sensor Network”

Innovator Ashok Gadgil, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab: “ElectroChemical Arsenic Remediation”

Innovator Mark Sobsey, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill: “Low Cost Bacterial Water Test”

Lili Anna Peresa, “The Comprehensive Approach of ONE DROP: Water for All, All for Water”

Each of the innovators rotated through focused discussion sessions to help shape their success strategy. I like to call it: Innovator Speed Dating.

So many incredible stories to share. Stay tuned.

Crosspost on BethBeck’s Blog.

Accelerating Innovation for a Sustainable Future.

We’ve been working on this project for some time — an innovative collaborative process to “launch” ideas, or disruptive green technologies, that address some of this planet’s growing pains.

All props to NASA’s Robbie Schingler, who envisioned a barcamp-type atmosphere to discuss sustainability challenges. We’d been looking for ways to tell our Space Station green story, and this concept fit the bill. We pulled together a team of creative folks, all bringing together different strengths, to birth theLAUNCH:Water incubator we’ll debut next week.

We wanted a TED-style event but with teeth, where we can chomp into issues and mash-up new approaches and solutions.

We created LAUNCH as a global initiative to identify and support the innovative work that is poised to contribute to a sustainable future. We want this process to accelerate solutions to meet urgent challenges facing our society. That’s the goal: to make a difference, leave this world better tomorrow than it is today.

We chose water as a logical starting point because it’s an issue we deal with on Space Station every day in orbit. Not only is water a critical commodity for our orbiting pioneers, but for so many living on our home planet.

Scarcity within a hostile environment is something we Earthlings and space travelers share.

So what is LAUNCH:Water? We are working with our founding partners, USAID,State Department, and NIKE, to allow 10 water-related emerging technologyinnovators the opportunity to present their ideas to a small group of thought-leadersfrom varied disciplines for a two and a half day conversation about possibilities. We break into small impact rotations to discuss content-focused issues/opportunities that affect each innovator individually. We have a team working with the innovators to develop how we shape these impact sessions for maximum benefit. Our hope is to use these structured conversations to leap-frog these ten innovators further down the path toward success in solving water issues facing our planet.

Why NASA? Because we’re problem-solvers — against all odds.

We solve problems. That’s what we do. I like to call it our brand reduction sauce– after all the ingredients are thrown into the pot and cooked and the essence is left behind. So why not convene a group of expert problem-solvers in various disciplines to address issues we face both on Earth and in the heavens above? LAUNCH is a gathering of problem-solvers to solve one MAJOR problem:

how to sustain life ON and OFF Earth.

We’ll live-stream the innovators’ presentations on Tuesday March 16th and Wednesday March 17th, so you can be part of this glorious experiment with us. We have a LAUNCHorg twitter account that we’ll keep updated, as well.

I’m looking forward to meeting all the innovators in person next week. I’m particularly excited about one of the innovations that bubbled up in the process: Manna Energy, run in his spare time by astronaut Ron Garan or @astro_ron on Twitter. You can go to their website or @MannaEnergy twitter feed to learn how they’re deploying water filtration devices in more than 400 schools in Rwanda, along with biogas generators and high efficiency cookstoves at 300 locations. Gives me goosebumps.

We’ll have so much to share as we move toward our inaugural event next week. We plan to serve “recycled water” just like our astronauts drink on Station, BTW. I guess we can’t serve it in paper cups or plastic bottles — neither are friends of the environment. Yet, if we serve in glass cups, we’ll have to wash them with water and detergent — not nice to the our planet either. Our most sustainable option will be to squirt “reformed urine” directly into the mouths of our guests. Now that will be a sight to see, won’t it? Good thing we’re live-streaming the event.

Stay tuned for frequent updates from the field.

Crosspost on BethBeck’s Blog and GovLoop.

Have we got a job for you!

Get your creative juices flowing. Capture all your ideas. We’re listening. You have until March 19, 2010 to share your ideas with us about how NASA can be more:

1. Transparent,
2. Participatory,
3. Collaborative, and
4. Innovative.

We’ve deployed a cool idea-sharing tool to let you give input, comment on input of others, and vote ideas up or down. Your ideas will feed into NASA’s Open Government Plan. You need an account first, but that’s as simple as adding your e-mail and a password.

Go ahead. Give it a try.

And if you find any ideas by me in the system, feel free to give them a generous thumbs up!  (I’m just getting started….)

“We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.” – John Gardner 1965

Let’s tackle those opportunities!

Crosspost on GovLoop and BethBeck’s Blog.

• Salina – data analysis
• Mike – extremebiology.net/blog
• Ammar – www.ptable.com
• Melina – chemtouch iphone app
• Brooke – Waves iphone app
• Alex – The Body Pod Game
• Carl – RPG Games
• Jack – Jack’s game

We learned how students use social media tools for homework and daily interaction with classmates and friends. They’re jazzed about anything that involves their friends (interaction) or what friends/others think is cool (the buzz factor).

Their comments about Twitter:

1. Twitter is for adults.
2. What’s the point?

I agree, from their perspective. My daughters don’t use Twitter. They text and Facebook their friends. They tease me about my TWaddiction, and threaten to take my iPhone from me during holidays — TWintervention. I digress….

Here’s how I see it:

Students have an extensive social network already. A well-populated, self-contained social bubble where the latest buzz spreads like a flash fire that consumes all the oxygen. Then they move on to the next buzz. Within their bubble, facebook meets their needs quite well. But, the moment they step out of their social bubble and yearn for the bigger buzz –timely information about what’s going on in the world, job fields or project funding — they may find Twitter useful. Or more likely they’ll leap-frog to the next social media buzz to follow Twitter.

Jack presented the games he created. We were totally blown away.

I piped up from the audience, saying someone needed to hire Jack. I asked Jack if he wanted to come to NASA and be an astronaut. He looked blankly like the words NASA and astronaut meant nothing to him. Someone else from the audience answered for him, ”Why would he want to be an astronaut, when he could be a game-developer?”

BTW: Did you know that the #1 career field for college graduates is game design?

Note: I received quite the ribbing about getting shot down by Jack. Oh NASA, we have SO much work to do! But, on the bright side, Salina was thrilled to talk about NASA.

Yay, SPACE-girl power!

Two major takeaways:

1. Students look for apps to help with homework. App developers take note: student’s create your buzz for you — if the app is cool AND meets their needs.
2. Students prefer social interaction over flashy design! If their friends or other students aren’t part of the experience, they won’t engage.

I leave you with this final image (and tweet) from the conference:

“Do you think bringing tweeters here gives NASA hope for the future.”

NASA Tweeps Photo Credit: NASA/Carla Cioffi

Hope for the future? Really?

Why wouldn’t we have hope for the future? With or without Twitter in the mix?

What’s not to hope for?

Now, I get all the doom and gloom reporting about job losses with the end of the Space Shuttle program, and threats of budget cuts. Yes, the job losses are real. Yes, they are heartbreaking AND very frightening for those whose jobs are at stake. Yes, we’ll probably take some budget hits from the White House and Congress. We are, after all, in a squeezed economy…though we see signs of recovery. But none of this is new. We’ve faced all this before.

But, hope for the future? I simply can’t conceive the reverse.

We have a universe of questions out there to find answers to. We, as humans, are curious creatures. We’ll find ways to get the answers. It may or may not look like someone’s pet project. It may or may not fit on today’s calendar. Or even tomorrow’s.

But we, as a human race, WILL GO FORWARD. We will seek answers beyond our planetary borders.

NASA will play a role. What that role will be is determined by the President and Congress. That’s the way this works. But we’ll be a player, none-the-less. We’ll shape the debate. We’ll craft the solutions.

Again, what’s not to hope for?

Maybe what we need more than hope is to work harder to ignite that spark of passion in young and old alike to:

• ask big questions,
• never accept the easy answer,
• stretch beyond even our wildest dreams.

Oh we have much to hope for! Humanity has many problems yet to solve. But some of us can’t sleep until we bridge the gap between imagination and reality. And, you know what? It’s not about you and me…or what we may want out of this life — fame, fortune, power, or simply survival.

Hope is about a better tomorrow…for all of humanity.

So the real question may be: what role will NASA and the international space community play in the future? (A HUGE one, I hope!) And, how can you and I take steps to get us there?

If you ask me, I want to: Be the hope! Be the change!

“Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Gandhi

Crosspost on Beth Beck’s Blog.

The catch: we nominate once a day in each of the 50 categories throughNovember 15th…AND only the top five nominations in each category move forward to the voting round.

Basically, the nomination period is a semi-final round. Mashable ensures users return to his site day after day, and tweet their results. Great PR for Mashable. He’s creating a social media frenzy by rewarding the social media frenzy. Like I said, brilliant.

Gotta’ love Pete. Wish we had him on our team!

With the few days left for nominations, I thought I’d share a couple of NASA-related choices (plus one or two).

Here are my nominations:

Tweet of the Year:

Tweet from Space by Tw-astronaut @Astro_Mike Massimino.

Funniest Tweet:

Tweet about life after space by @Astro_Mike.

Twitter User of the Year: @Astro_Mike — over 1 million followers!

Most Inspiring to Follow: @Astro_Mike.

Best Brand Use of Twitter: NASA.

Best Brand Use of Facebook: NASA.

Best Brand Use of YouTube: NASA YouTube.

Best Flickr Photographer: NASA’s Bill Ingalls

Best Online Video Web Series: Mike Massimino’s “NASA Behind Scenes” series.

Best Non-Profit Use of Social Media: NASA + Space Tweep Society + OpenNASA.

TwitPic of the Year: French Photographer Thierry LeGault’s spectacular shot of the STS-125 Hubble repair mission in front of the Sun. (FYI: NASA provided the camera to enable Thierry to capture this image.)

Best Musical Artist to Follow: Tom Fletcher of McFly

I know you’re thinking the last one doesn’t fit under the space theme. Think again. (See previous posts.)

Call to ACTION: You only have a few days left to give space a chance in the universe of social media. Make your voice count.

Cross post on BethBeck’s Blog.