Talk: NASA

Grover on GROVER

I'm not sure where/how/if to put this. -- Brad D. (talk) 21:19, May 22, 2013 (UTC)

We should definitely include it. I read about it last night here. It's basically a real-life Muppet Mention. Right now, there's a "Trivia" section, so it can go there, or we can rework that as "Muppet Mentions" (the Cookie twitter thing is borderline, but NASA did respond to him directly; otherwise it could just be moved up as a reference since he mentioned the "space program.") Thanks for bringing it up, Brad. Things like this make me happy. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 21:31, May 22, 2013 (UTC)

Yes! I read about GROVER some months ago, but couldn't tie it directly to our furry blue monster. That tweet makes me so very happy :) —Scott (message me) 13:00, May 23, 2013 (UTC)

Big Bird on Challenger

There's another source for this, possibly with more information, but I can't remember where. Is it in The Wisdom of Big Bird? —Scott (message me) 17:44, March 24, 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I believe it is. — Julian (talk) 20:19, March 24, 2012 (UTC)

There's no index, so I just skimmed through and couldn't find it. I did a search for challenger, nasa, and shuttle on Google Books in that title, and didn't have any luck. I'm assuming it searches the entire text, but I'd rather not buy it again to find out. I should really just read it again and make my own index for the wiki. —Scott (message me) 20:34, March 24, 2012 (UTC)

The only other one that I can think of that might have talked about it is Street Gang, but I don't have a copy of either book at hand. — Julian (talk) 20:43, March 24, 2012 (UTC)

The story was supposed to go into Spinney's book, but was cut. Spinney talked about it when doing personal appearances promoting the book. According to a ToughPigs article:

“There was one story in particular that got cut because it didn't fit the tone of the book. He was going to go into space with Big Bird, and they were going to film some things for Sesame Street. He ended up not going -- it was too complicated bringing the bird in the space shuttle -- so that "educator" slot was filled by Christa McAuliffe. That was 1986, and that was the Challenger space shuttle, which blew up on takeoff. (Everyone is breathless hearing about this.) Caroll says that it was a terrible thing, and he gets a shiver thinking about how he could have been on that shuttle. That story was supposed to go in the book, but the publishers decided that it was too depressing.”

There's also some information on it in this 2006 blog post. -- Brad D. (talk) 22:59, March 24, 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that's it! That's what I was thinking of, thanks. —Scott (message me) 21:38, April 8, 2012 (UTC)

Kermit doll

I'm parking this image here for now, until we can find more information out about it. All I've found (and I've not dug much yet) is the following from a March 24, 2008 entry on www.nasawatch.com

"It would seem this image (S123E00737B) of a specially outfitted Kermit the Frog aboard the ISS appeared - and then disappeared - from the NASA Human Spaceflight website"

-- Nate (talk) 20:15, December 8, 2009 (UTC)