Sometime during the week of April 15th the @NASA Twitter account posted that they would be holding a "Tweetup" for the STS-132 Shuttle Launch on May 13th-14th. In order to attend you had to be following the @NASA account, and sign-up on a website that went live on April 19th. Since my wife, my sister, and I were already planning to go to Florida from May 13th-16th this seemed like a great opportunity. Both my sister and I signed up, but my wife forgot (she still doesn't even have a Twitter account). Very late on April 21st emails went out to about 140 people confirming that they had been selected to attend out of over 1000 who signed up . I was one of the fortunate few selected, and my sister was one of the many that was put on the wait-list.
In the email I was told I needed respond no later than 11:59 PM EDT on April 23rd. While I was tempted to immediately respond, I decided I needed to sleep on it. It weighed very heavy on me that I was the only person in my party that was selected to attend. I was feeling an overwhelming sence of guilt about this, and I was trying to decide whether it was right for me to accept when my sister wasn't selected. At the very least, I wanted to see if I could get launch viewing tickets for the NASA Causeway. Those tickets were scheduled to go on sale the morning after I got my invite on April 22nd. I got up early that morning and tried for almost an hour to get on the Kennedy Space Center ticket site to no avail. Finally, almost 30 minutes after the tickets were supposed to go on sale the @ExploreSpaceKSC account tweeted that due to technical issues the tickets would not go on sale that day.
Over the next couple hours I mulled over whether or not I was being too selfish in wanting to accept this invite. I was worried that it might cause a rift between my sister and I. Between feeling guilty about this, dealing with some issues with other family members, and being super swamped at work it was one of the worst days in a long time. Mid-afternoon I made a discovery about some of the details of the tweetup. I had assumed that the viewing pass I was going to receive would be for the NASA Causeway that I mentioned earlier. Instead, I found out I would be even closer at the Press Site. I pretty much broke down right there. Non-media personnel rarely get to view a launch from this site. I had been talking about how awesome it would be to see the launch from there ever since we booked our trip a month prior, and now that is where I will get to watch the launch! At that moment I realized I couldn't pass up this opportunity and immediately sent off my confirmation email.
I starting preparing myself for how I was going to break the news to my pregnant wife as well as my sister that I would not be with them for about half of our trip. I had been talking to them both most of the day over Blackberry Messenger and it seemed like they would both be upset at me if I accepted the tweepup invite. Fortunately, this perception ended up being incorrect. We all admitted later that it was definitely hard to convey tone in simple text. While my sister was disappointed that she would not be able to attend the tweetup, she was happy that I was able to go. I made the necessary changes to my flight and car rental reservations, and I was ready to go.
While my launch plans were finally set, I still needed to try to get my sister and my wife setup with a good place to view the launch. On April 23rd the @ExploreSpaceKSC account tweeted that the Causeway and Kennedy Space Center launch tickets would go on sale April 26th. The 26th rolled around and despite both mine and my sisters efforts we were not able to secure tickets. Today, I found out that the tickets for viewing the launch at the Astronaut Hall of Fame were on sale. After being on hold for 25 minutes and talking to a representative for another 5 I was able to secure these tickets. While viewing the launch is a little better at Space View Park since there is a clear view of the Launchpad 39A (albeit 12 miles away), the Astronaut Hall of Fame has air conditioning, restrooms, and food. For the uninitiated these are 3 very important things to a pregnant woman.
Now that our itinerary is set we are just hoping that the launch goes off without a hitch as scheduled. I plan on making at least one or two posts while at the tweetup so look for those starting on May 13th.