Last calendar week I was fortunate enough to follow from three miles away as 4.5 million Sudanese pound of spacecraft shot up on a mainstay of flak , pierce the clouds and heading for an orbital rendezvous with the International Space Station .
As I watchedAtlantismake the final launch of the 30 - year - old space shuttle program , I was strike by the overlap of technology and human race that I had witness .
Of networks and people
Though the outer space shuttle didcarry two iPhone 4s into orbit , that was n’t why I was there . I was present at Kennedy Space Center for the launch ofAtlantisas a part of the NASA Tweetup , an innovative program put on by NASA ’s public affairs office . The NASA Tweetup program gives indiscriminately selected followers of NASA ’s Twitter streams the chance to visit the space authority ’s facilities and even view launches . I was one of 150 Twitter users selected to visit Cape Canaveral ( at our own expense ) for the last shuttlecock launch .
The collapsible shelter which housed the NASA Tweetup was in the same area as all the member of the news medium who were covering the outcome . The proximity supply an interesting dividing line . Most organizations rely on the news medium to communicate with the public . While NASA has do good from an awful destiny of news coverage over the years , it has never been contented to stop there . Since there have been astronauts , those astronauts have been making public appearances , all part of a concerted crusade to generate interest in space travel .
The NASA Tweetup program is , I think , in that same flavour . It ’s about using the power of these raw social networks that are emerging on the cyberspace to reach people in a whole novel way . And it ’s not just about the 150 of us who were invited to the space marrow , but about everyone else we reach via Twitter , Facebook , and other societal networks .
Three miles away, Atlantis readies for launch.
NASA has n’t just embraced Twitter users , either — it ’s bring together them . Almost every spaceman has a Twitter account . Tweets have been place from infinite for a twain of years now , first via an email proxy , and now directly . I do n’t think anyone knows for sure just how big an encroachment societal web will have on group like NASA , but it seems like the ripe thing for a government agency to do .
This approaching is spreading , too . The day before I go far at the NASA Tweetup , Macworldstaff author Lex Friedman was at the White House for the first White House Tweetup . ( Proud NASA public - occasion people tell that NASA was , in fact , part of the inspiration for the White House issue . )
A lot of people pooh - pooh societal media meshwork , but after meeting all those enthusiastic , space - loving Twitter substance abuser in person , I can see their power . The most important factor in social - media networks is n’t the mesh , it ’s the people . For three days in Florida I spent time with interesting people from almost every state and a dozen countries . It was a fantastic experience .
Three miles away, Atlantis readies for launch.
I continue in a rented business firm in Cocoa Beach , just south of the space center — something set up entirely via a Facebook group . My housemates were two BBC reporters , a tech CEO , a cell biologist from Australia , a retiree , a freelancer web developer , a technical school blogger , andone of myMacworldcolleagues .
The day before launching , NASA treat us to a full day of events , including visit from several astronauts ( andElmo ) and NASA personnel . We got to see the shuttle from a few hundred yard away and take the air inside the colossalVehicle Assembly Building — something most NASA employees do n’t even get a luck to do .
Three miles away , Atlantis ready for launch .
Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia
The next break of day , we arrived at the Space Center at 5 a.m. Atlantis was on the launch launch area , illuminated by giant xenon spotlights . The Tweetup collapsible shelter fill rapidly , and we develop more all - star visit from astronaut , most impressively from original Shuttle fender Robert Crippen . And then all of a sudden , it was launch time . We had only been given a 30 percent chance of get wind a launch that daytime , due to mentally ill summer weather in Florida : There were clouds everywhere , and a massive electrical storm had rained down on the Cape the night before .
But never underestimate the power of a 30 - percent chance . At 11 a.m. we filed outside and chose our personal vantage points in example the countdown get along off . At T - minus 31 second , the countdown was halted and we all groaned . We ’d be coming back the next sidereal day to try it all again . But then something amazing happened : with only a twosome of minutes available to get the countdown back on schedule , the NASA flight of stairs controllers managed to verify that the alarm that had stop the countdown was n’t in reality valid . We were back on . And before you acknowledge it , there was a huge cloud puffing up around the fundament of the launching complex three miles away .
What followed was an impossibly brilliant light , the shrieks of aroused TV audience , and then a tacky crackle sound as the air was shatter by the forces of the shuttlecock ’s three main engine and its two solid Eruca vesicaria sativa boosters .
I made a composite of the video I shot from my camera and a few other videos from around me , as well as NASA TV itself , to give me a video souvenir of my launching experience . I ’ll embed it below — someone else was shooting his chemical reaction to the launch , and would n’t you bed it , I ’m in the nip . So I can actually watch myself watch out the launch . Pretty cool .
Creativity and vision
As I watch the shuttle lift off from Pad 39A , I considered just what a feat of technical achievement it interpret . We dwell in a world where people not much different from you and I build complex automobile that can pip into place in a matter of minute of arc . The Internet that spans the Earth , iPhones that relate to it wirelessly , all the mellow technology that instill our lives … all of it is the product of the imagination and innovation of people .
Gaudi ’s Sagrada Familia
I may be the first person in the world to try and draw a parallel between the Space Shuttle and a church building in Spain , but here goes . In February I was in Barcelona attending a deal show , and while I was there I did some sightseeing . While stand up in the middle of the Sagrada Família , I was overwhelmed with the same feelings that I experienced again a few months later during the shuttle launch .
I ’ll leave the spiritual relevance of this Catholic basilica to the lector ’s own judgement , and just discuss the construction itself . The Sagrada Família is a judgment - boggle social structure design by the designer Antoni Gaudi . From the outside it looks a mo like a crashed spaceship , and the interior is even stranger . Not only is it perhaps the most beautiful man - made structure I have ever seen , but I think it speaks to something fundamental about our potential .
Gaudi was just a military personnel — a supremely talented one , yes , but still just a military man . Not only did he conceptualise of that incredible construction , but he also agnise it would never be completed in his lifespan . The Sagrada Família groundbreaking ceremony was in 1882 , and it ’s expect to be finished sometime in the 2020s . They ’re hop to finish it around the 100th anniversary of Gaudi ’s demise .
stand in the middle of a Christian church in Barcelona , and stand on soggy grass in central Florida , I feel the same matter : A reminder of just what people can fulfil if they localise their minds to it , take advantage of their intelligence information and creative thinking , and turn away to compromise their vision . From beautiful buildings to roar spaceships , human mind gestate of it and human hands forge the tools that make it chance .
That same liveliness is flourish in the engineering science industriousness today . I ’ll grant you , I do n’t expect down at my iPhone with the same level of amazement as the Sagrada Família or the Space Shuttle . But I think that in its excogitation and in its focal point on empowering the creative thinking of its exploiter , Apple exemplifies that inspirit better than anyone .
