KSC Day 1

Obvious





Vehicle Assembly Building where they mate the orbiter to its orange external tank and solid rocket boosters. It's so tall it rains in there from its own clouds.









Well gave it my best shot.






Countdown!




Endeavour on the launch pad.





Seth Green and his wife Clare are visiting for the Tweetup.





Seth Green.










NASA Press room at KSC.






Unexpected brush fires across the river behind the press site!






Seth's tweet about meeting me. He and his wife and I just ran into each other at the Tweetup site, and zero other people around. So we were able to exchange some words on space station, tours, and stuff. His idea to take the pictures. He thought it was cool to meet me (NASA!) and I thought the same about him! He loves NASA. He's having fun on their visit!

Tomorrow I meet LeVar Burton. He is doing a Reading Rainbow 2.0 and would like to interview me for it. Cool, yes?

Today I got to go inside of the Orbiter Processing Facility, where Atlantis is being prepped for launch in June. It dawned on me I was staring at the last orbiter that will ever be processed there. The only other time I'd visited was as a student, and Columbia was in there. Also visited the VAB today and I was tagging along with the Public Affairs and Outreach (PAO) folks so I got to watch them interview some of the vehicle leads. One was Jerry Cook, director of the Space Shuttle Main Engines. He recognized me from my FRR presentation last week and was happy to meet me! He said that was the best part of FRR and at dinner that night, it was the highlight of the managers' table talk. It's so cool to be recognized for my work. So very cool.

Will post more pictures soon. Tomorrow's my Tweetup speech. Time to cram!