Interview with KRDO Newschannel 13

During the launch of Atlantis, I provided live audio to KRDO Newschannel 13 for a news segment by reporter Patty Moon. They were able to sync my audio with video from the launch for a unique perspective of the launch. Thanks to Matt Meister and Patty Moon for helping to promote the importance of math and science education. Click on the picture above, or here http://krdo.m0bl.net/r/is91d for the story.

My Interview on CNN American Morning w/ Ali Velshi

I had the amazing opportunity to talk live on CNN's American Morning with Ali Velshi prior to the launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis. Topics ranged from "tweeting in space" to the future of space education. Also being interviewed with me is Sarah Blask, a fellow @NasaTweetup winner. This was Ali's first (and last) space shuttle launch. A video copy of the interview can be found at CNN's web site http://on.cnn.com/q5KCDv

A special thanks to Michelle Cumbo, a producer for the show. The absolutely nicest person you will ever meet in television - really.

Ali Velshi started as a business and economics consultant for CNN. He then worked extensively throughout the 2008 Presidential Elections and is now the main anchor for CNN America Morning. He also hosts CNN Wake Up. He is also one the "technology" experts for CNN, sporting both Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Pueblo teacher overwhelmed while viewing shuttle's last liftoff

from The Gazette - Colorado Springs 2011-07-08 06:41:08


CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — At exactly 11:29 a.m. Friday, space shuttle Atlantis both lifted off from Kennedy Space Center and lowered the curtain on a momentous era in America’s human space program.

Atlantis is making one final run to the International Space Station (ISS), ferrying 8,000 pounds of much needed supplies. When it returns from its 12-day mission, it will join its sister orbiters — Endeavour and Discovery — as a museum piece.

Atlantis was NASA’s fourth operational shuttle, making its maiden voyage on Oct. 3, 1985. As of blastoff, the spacecraft has completed a journey of more than three decades, 293 days, 4,648 Earth orbits and 120 million miles. In all, Atlantis flew 33 missions, deployed 14 satellites — including the planetary probes Magellan and Galileo — docked seven times with the now deorbited Russian MIR space station and 12 times with the ISS. Atlantis was also the first shuttle to service the Hubble Space Telescope.

Carrying just four veteran crewmembers — commander Chris Ferguson, pilot Doug Hurley and mission specialists Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim — STS-135 is the smallest mission since 1983.

Despite being given only a 30 percent chance of launch due to inclement weather, STS-135 roared spectacularly into orbit, cheered on by an estimated 1 million onlookers throughout Florida’s space coast. Among them was Todd Seip, a middle school science teacher from Pueblo participating in the NASA Tweetup, a formal gathering of 150 invited social media users who spent two days touring the space center, listening to lectures from astronauts, scientists and engineers, and culminating with a view of the launch from the press site.

“The emotions of the past couple days have been overwhelming,” Seip said. “I’m looking at this experience through my students’ eyes. The whole time I’ve been here, I’ve tried to think, ‘If I could have brought them with me, what would I have shown them?’ I will take this unique experience back with me for them.”

Atlantis’ launch is bittersweet. It marks not only the end of the shuttle program, but also the beginning of end, in the opinion of many lawmakers, former astronauts and industry executives, of America’s leadership in space.

Last year, President Obama killed Constellation, NASA’s program to return astronauts to the moon. When Atlantis rolls to a stop on the runway on the 20th, the United States will no longer possess the technology to launch a human being into space, nor does it have any future exploratory vehicle on the drawing board. For now, the space agency will buy ISS-bound astronauts seats on the Russian Soyuz.

“My parents had Apollo, and the space shuttle was my generation’s spaceship. But now there’s a gap — there’s a spaceship missing,” lamented Seip. “Students just like mine, hopefully some of mine, will be the ones who will design and build NASA’s next spacecraft. It gives me a lot of hope that this isn’t the end, but rather the start of a whole new chapter in space.”

Final shuttle launch: ‘End of a chapter’

Final shuttle launch: ‘End of a chapter’ By LORETTA SWORD

lorettas@chieftain.com The Pueblo Chieftain

 

The space shuttle Atlantis lifts off last week from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

COURTESY PHOTO/TODD SEIP

Todd SeipSkyview Middle School science teacher Todd Seip smiles moments after the spacecraft's launch. Exhaust plumes linger in the sky behind him.

He tried to watch the nation's final shuttle launch through his students' eyes, but Todd Seip's heart had its own agenda through some of it.

"There were people high-fiving and screaming all around, and there were others, like me, who were in tears over it all," said the Skyview Middle School science teacher, who's also a lifelong, unabashed fan of all things related to space.

"I don't know what it is about those moments that bring those feelings out, but that was one of them," Seip said Monday, two days after returning from Kennedy Space Center and still at a loss for words to adequately describe the experience.

Seip was one of 150 Twitter followers who won a NASA lottery that brought them all together for a whirlwind tour of the space center that included interviews with astronauts and engineers (and reporters from CNN and other national media outlets) and culminated with VIP seats to the nation's final shot into space.

Their only obligation was the promise to Tweet about their trip to thousands of NASA Twitter fans worldwide. Seip's own followers (aside from his wife and 7-year-old twins at home) included 20 students who signed on for minute-by-minute updates.

His whole class this year, and for many to come no doubt, will share the experience via photos, video and a blog spot that Pueblo County School District 70 has agreed to host on its website.

As awestruck as he was by the shuttle launch itself, Seip said it wasn't necessarily the highlight of his trip.

As he walked through the gigantic building where shuttles are assembled, disassembled and repaired, he said he was humbled not just by its sheer size, but by the thought of "all the man- and woman-hours that were spent in that building, working on incredible machines that won't be used anymore. I just realized how dedicated all those people really are to that mission, and wondered how the whole thing felt for them."

The mood around the space center was quietly expectant.

Seip said he saw and felt "a mood of deep introspection. A lot of those people knew they would be getting pink slips this week. The volunteers knew times will be changing for them."

Several former and current astronauts expressed similar sentiments during interviews with Seip and some of the other NASA TweetUp winners, he said.

"Some of them will get to go back up with the Russians, but none of them in an American spacecraft, at least not a NASA craft. For the first time in our space program, there's no new space vehicle on the boards, nothing new to look forward to. We've always dominated, but now, somebody else will," Seip said.

He predicted that the government's withdrawal from space is temporary, though, and doesn't mean the end of American space travel.

Whether the next foray into the universe from American soil is undertaken by NASA or a pioneering private enterprise, no doubt Seip will be watching — as he has since watching the first brave space explorers skyrocket into the skies in tiny Gemini "capsules." Seip saw one of the Geminis at the space center and was astounded to realize that "they aren't much bigger than the bathroom in an airplane."

Seip said he hopes that by sharing his recent experience with students — many of whom had never heard of the shuttle program, and no doubt those in the future will have forgotten about it — other minds and hearts will be sparked to imagine, to study and to dream. Who knows? Maybe one of Seip's students will be the next American on the moon — or on Mars.

As far as he's concerned, the final shuttle launch is just a pause in a long history of American ingenuity, determination, courage and hope.

"This might be the end of a chapter, but there's another chapter, and maybe more than one. They just haven't been written yet," Seip said.

Anyone who's interested can share Seip's adventure at: skyviewscience.blogspot.com.

The last launch

Friday, July 8, 2011 marked a historical milestone for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). It was the last flight of the Space Shuttle Atlantis and the final flight for the space shuttle program. Began 30 years ago, the space shuttle has been the workhorse for NASA, ferrying astronaunts and satellites to orbit and completing construction of the huge International Space Station.

There were more press and journalists on hand for this launch than for any other. In fact, only more press credentials were given for the launch of John Glenn in 1962. Media from all across the globe desended on Kennedy Space Center to record the event. Literally, the eyes of the world were turned towards a 25 year old vehicle with more than a million miles on its odometer. Would it fly? on time? weather permitting?

Anxious moments.

My journey to witness the launch of Atlantis was a result of a formal gathering of Twitter followers to the Nasa web site. As part of the nasa social media called @NASATweetup, we were charged with the task of disseminating the multitude of information given by Nasa into a more public-friendly format.

I will be posting more information about the lauch, and a behind-the-scenes look at Nasa in the days to come. I will also use this space to generate 10 Twitter school lessons that can be used to supplement math and science curriculum lessons.

Follow me on Twitter @Skyviewscience
Email me at tseip@district70.org
Subscribe to this blog for immediate updates.

Todd