NASAWatch Is 21
How scientists are scrambling to safeguard vital environmental data, PBS Newshour
“MILES O’BRIEN: While scientists wait to see what shoes might drop, a rumor mill echoes across the Twitterverse … Are scientists in a panic? Is that what it is? What’s going on?
KEITH COWING, NASA Watch: They know where the panic button is, and they look at it once or twice a day.
MILES O’BRIEN: Keith Cowing is a former NASA biologist who founded the watchdog Web site NASA Watch 20 years ago. He’s the proto-rogue, and now he says everybody seems to be joining in.”
Keith’s note: NASAWatch turns 21 on 1 Apr 2017. It started as “NASA RIFWatch” on 1 Apr 1996 and was first hosted on a Mac Classic II on an ISDN line in my little condo in Reston, Virginia (see 20 Years Ago Today: The Seeds of NASAWatch). Here a few things from those early days that are still online:
– Rogue Webmasters, Government Executive, 1 Oct 1996
– NASA’s Most Important Asset, Gerry Griffin, 31 December 1996
– Dan Goldin Comments to the Space Science Advisory Committee (SSAC) Meeting, 6/17/96
– Changes in Thinking At NASA November 29, 1996, PBS News Hour
Plus this piece from last year
– NASA Watch Celebrates 20 Years of Critiquing the Space Agency’s Every. Single. Move., Inverse (2016)
Just to show you how things have changed, this photo should shock a few of you … (well worth a click) – and no, it is not an April Fool’s joke. Today, some up and coming bloggers and digeratti love to throw snark at me just like I threw it at Dan Goldin back in the day. Life is funny like that.
Those of you who have followed my ‘other’ exploits will know that I have had a certain interest in doing online updates from distant and extreme locations (Devon Island, Everest Base Camp, etc.). This website (still online), “The McMurdo Dry Valleys Long-Term Research Project – Life in Extreme Environments; An Antarctic Field Journal“, done with my friend Dale Andersen, was one of the very earliest websites actually updated from Antarctica.
People have been asking me to look back on things and pick the events that are most memorable. After all I have spent 1/3 of my life running this thing. I have been given many chances to do things because of my peculiar notoriety. This shaky video, done live with my friend Miles O’Brien – about our mutual friend Scott Parazynski – while this picture was being taken – is the one singular moment where it all came together.
Thanks to all of you for stopping by for the past 21 years.
Many happy returns of the day…!
Now NASAWatch can drink legally. Beware ….
Happy Birthday, NW! Many, many more!
Happy birthday RW/NW. Job well done! Keep up the important work!
Congratulations! And thank you for being a frequent B.S. detection service for the great ventures that are space exploration and science; not to mention the politics that are often linked to them.
Holy crap I’m old! I remember when NASA RIF Watch was new.
Happy Birthday! I have been following you since late 1996. Congratulations on shinning light in on the “deep state” at NASA!
Cheers, Keith! Keep up the great work!
Congrats. Time to get a drink!
Congrats to NW! I dont think it would have been so important in an earlier era. At that time I think you had competent, inspirational leadership who had a good idea of where they wanted to go and how they wanted to get there. I think NASA has lost its way. I see incompetence, ineptitude, inexperience, contractors whose goal is dollars, not achievement, and a workforce that is leaderless.
Thanks Keith. You let me post stuff that other sites would not.
Thanks for sticking with it all these years, Keith. You’ve been my first source for news about NASA-related things since the days of RIFWatch. I appreciate your insight and your teeth. They are a powerful combination. I hope you’ll continue sharing your perspective with us for many years to come.
Congrats, Keith. I discovered your “photo-rogue” site a few months after you launched- now I know why it was so slow to load, although on my end I was running one of the original Macs.
Anyway, like so many, I’ve come to realize it’s about the only place that a non-NASA space nut can learn what’s really going on. Thanks.
In keeping with the how things have changed… came across this photo today of a 5mg harddrive… oh … and congrats Keith
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…