Well the Governor of Florida has turned down the High Speed Rail plan for the 3rd and final time and a lawsuit to prevent that has failed. The St. Petersburg Times reports that the governor had "concerns about saddling state taxpayers with construction cost overruns, operating losses due to low ridership and returning the $2.4 billion to the federal government if the project failed." To me this makes perfect sense. The money being allocated is for the construction of the rail only and not the maintenance of it. If the President really wanted the US to move forward on high-speed rail for the country he should have included funding for maintenance just like is done today for highways. Now, since I am not a resident of Florida and wouldn't have to bear any burdens of cost overruns, I will admit I am disappointed this isn't going forward. I liked the idea of being able to go to Tampa from Orland without having to drive. I have made that trip a few times and it is a long drive after spending the day at the beach, the zoo, or one of the theme parks. Oh well. Maybe some of that funding could be sent to my neck of the woods so we could get some decent public transit here.

On Day 2 of the Tweetup I arrived at the tent at 9:30am after leaving the hotel just after 8am. Right after I set up we went to the countdown clock for a second group photo of the event. Otherwise, there really wasn’t anything else planned that we were required to attend. The agenda was a little more relaxed. At 10:30 we went directly across from the VAB to see the Astrovan pass by. It stopped for a few moments so we all were able to get some good pictures. We were told it was tradition for the Press to wave and clap. Almost all 150 of us were out there cheering them on. We couldn't see them from behind their tinted glass, but I'm sure they appreciated our gesture.

I took some time after that to scope out a spot for my tripod. I didn't plan on being behind the lens during the launch. Instead, I planned on using my wired remote to fire off some shots with the hope that one of them would come out. I definitely lucked out as you can see below.

As you know by now I had been looking forward to going to the NASA Launch Tweetup for several weeks. I got in to the central Florida area around 11pm on Wednesday, May 12th. After getting my rental, driving to my hotel and trying to wind down I finally went to bed around 2am. The next morning I got up around 7:15 took a quick shower, ate a quick breakfast, and made my way to the Kennedy Space center.

Last week I wrote about getting invited to the STS-132 Tweetup. Yesterday I received my schedule of events and I figured I would share them. This is just copy & pasted from the email I received so please excuse some of the specific instructions. (Click the "Read more" link to see the schedule).