NASA Tweetup, Part 7? The Endless BBQ and The Planetarium

This is the story of a BBQ that is Endlessly awesome. A tradition after the launches, it is put on by a couple of awesome "spacetweeps" (clever name for space loving Twitter people), who provide a ton of food and beer. I went to the one after the launch for 135 and I remember someone saying they had about 200 people in and out of the house that night, I remember seeing every beer and liquor imaginable there, on a help yourself basis.

For the Endless BBQ after the GRAIL launch, Cocoa Beach Brewing Company offered up their facility, with their newly built deck out back. This place is the cutest bar I have ever seen. If you walked in not knowing where you were, you would think you were in a really cute coffee shop. I can't remember what kind of beer was in the keg, (help me out here guys) but I know I drank a lot of it. The food was great, the company was great. At what party can you sit around drinking lots of beer and talking math and physics and space? Endless BBQ, that's where!

I can't remember half the conversations I had that night, but I remember meeting some fabulous people, hearing awesome music, drinking wonderful beer and having a super good time.

One of the people attending GRAIL so generously offered to let me share her hotel room on Cocoa beach with her since I was absolutely not going to drive back to Orlando after this. The next morning, I woke up and walked over to the beach in the dark, and watched the our star rise over the Atlantic. It was spectacular, I love walking on the beach and I love sunrises.

Back up though. The night before as we were going to sleep, an email came through to our phones saying the Friday morning launch attempt was canceled, but NASA so generously offered to accommodate us for one more launch attempt Saturday morning. So that meant Friday was a free day. This is why I was on the beach Friday morning and not out chasing rocket launches...

I came home that day, relaxed, played with Pupples (it missed me so!) and got ready to head back out to Cocoa. It was announced that Dr. Randii Wessen from JPL would be speaking at the Brevard Planetarium though that evening, and I definitely wanted to go to that. So I headed back out and showed up there about an hour before the talk to do some homework.

Well, Dr. Wessen was already there along with the head of the Astronomy/Physics department, Dr. Fiorella Terenzi (they are both on Wikipedia, look them up). I sat and talked with them, such interesting people. Dr. Wessen's talk was so interesting, especially the part that explained how Curiosity (the Mars rover about to launch in November) would land on Mars.

After the lecture, there was a "reception" out in the science center part of the planetarium. They had all sorts of fun stuff there for kids to learn about scientific concepts, lots of "toys" that even us (yes, me) adults had fun with.

As I was speaking to the lady from NASA with the moon rock, (I apologize for not remembering names here), Dr. Terenzi invited me to dinner with herself, Dr. Wessen, and a bunch of other people.

It was an awesome evening with awesome, intellectual conversation- I there were several other NASA folks there as well, along with a student of Dr. Terenzis and a fellow Tweetup attendee.

From L to R: Tamre, Dr. Terenzi, Dr. Wessen, Me, Lisa

(My phone was dying so no flash, poor lighting)

Also, Dr. Wessen worked with Carl Sagan and on the Voyagers. If you are not aware, Carl Sagan is my hero and the Voyagers are my absolute favorite thing to read about. I love learning about their backstories, I love hearing anything about them. I was at a loss for thoughts though, I was so curious about them and what it was like to work with Dr. Sagan, yet I couldn't really think of anything to ask him about them. Really, it was just a nice dinner, with really intelligent people. And they had me try smoked salmon, which I had never had, and I am now hooked on! :)

I love good conversations. I am a talker, I am very inquisitive and I LOVE to learn and laugh. Meeting people with the passion for/or knowledge of Physics, Space, Math is rare. So it is like a flood gate opening when I am around people who I can talk about this stuff with and not get eye rolls or sighs of impatience. I was in my element, and I honestly drove away from dinner so happy. I didn't want this awesome week to end.

After dinner, I went back my friend's hotel and crashed. We had to be up at 4am to meet up with the tour bus at 6am for the final launch attempt we could view from NASA property!