Astronaut and Expedition 25 Commander Doug “Wheels” Wheelock was the honored guest at a Tweetup held at NASA Headquarters on Mar. 16. More than 90 “Tweeps,” or users of the social medium Twitter, were on hand to see Wheelock’s presentation of his recent five-month-plus stay aboard the International Space Station.

We nerded-out hard on this. After scanning through You Tube subscriptions on the Droid X we came upon this tweet-up event with Commander @Astro_Wheels . We booted it up. Not thinking it’d be a long watch. After 30 minutes later we were still watching. Still entranced.

There’s a point when Commander Wheelock is talking about being on a dying spacecraft, the ISS, last summer and he mentions being on “the ragged edge.”

We dare you not to see him going Capt Mal Reynolds on the space station.

Now this video event is not as polished as a Reid Gower production. It’s clunky. It’s raw. And more important, it’s real. These are real people living and working in space just like the 1950s promised we all would be doing.

The future is here. The future is now and only a select few are experiencing space for a few months at a time. This is not what the idealist 1950s taught would happen. But it is the future they dreamed…sort of.

Also, apparently @Astro_Wheels became good friends with the lead singer of Five For Fighting through the unforeseen phenomenon and international communications device Twitter.

Commander Wheelock also talks about his early trepidations on using twitter and his eventual love of the service. He eventually learned that this simple social device was the platform on which he could communicate with the world stage. Taking with like-minded individuals worldwide and keeping the future space dream alive. Twitter has become how we talk to ourselves in the heavens.

The Future moves in strange ways.
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