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NASAWatch Is 24

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
April 1, 2020
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NASAWatch Is 24

Keith’s note: NASAWatch turns 24 on 1 Apr 2020. 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 2016
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 – possibly the first – website 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 nearly 1/3 of my life running this damn 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 in 2009 – about our mutual friend Scott Parazynski – while this picture was being taken – is the one singular moment where it all came together. I wrote about it here: “My Star Trek Episode at Everest“.
Thanks to all of you for stopping by for the past 24 years. Let’s all hope we’re here for the 25th anniversary.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

14 responses to “NASAWatch Is 24”

  1. ThomasLMatula says:
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    Happy Anniversary! A pioneer of the new digital journalism!

  2. Wendy Yang says:
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    I found this website way back in 2011, and now I’m almost graduating college with my undergrad degree. Keith, I can’t overstate how much reading this site influenced my goals that led to me to where I am now, how much it motivated me to pursuit my degree, and I’m sure there are plenty of other readers who feel the same too. I’m younger than this site, so I missed a lot of what was going on earlier on this site’s history, but I hope this site continues.

    • kcowing says:
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      Thank you for sharing this. We have tried to be useful to people. As for your age, well, nothing is more pleasurable than hearing that the site has influenced someone’s career choices!

  3. Paul Gillett says:
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    Came across your site a good many years ago via a link from another article and have been hooked ever since.

    The product that you and Marc Boucher put out each day is second to none. In addition to holding NASA and Industry to account; the depth and experience of the many who comment here provides an educational resource that is second to none for an old time Apollo era “space buff” like myself.

    Congratulations and thank you, from “North of the 49th.”

  4. Richard Cooper says:
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    Thank you Keith for candor, wit, challenge and humor on a range of notable issues. Congratulations on hitting 24 and looking forward to your silver celebration. Well done!

  5. Michael Kaplan says:
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    Congrats and have enjoyed every year! Stay safe, Keith.

  6. fcrary says:
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    Keith,
    NASA Watch (and NASA RIF) have been fantastic, and I really appreciate all of the work you have put into it. But I do have a question. You have, as you wrote, put a large part of your life into it. Have you thought about retirement? We can’t expect you to run such a great site forever, and I’d hate to see it die, when and if you retire. Have you any thoughts to offer on that subject?

    • Marc Boucher says:
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      NASA Watch will continue on should Keith ever decide to retire. We’ve got a plan in place which includes me taking over more editing duties as I’ve done in the past when needed, including when Keith spent a few months in Nepal.

      • fcrary says:
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        Thanks. That’s good to know. I hope I’ll still be able to read and comment on NASA Watch in 2041 (on its 45th anniversary.) Somehow I suspect Keith isn’t the sort of person who would ever completely retire from the job, but once it gets close to half a century of good and hard work, a chance to ease off a bit is only fair. That’s not too different from some planetary science missions. By the end of the Cassini mission, over 25 years from instrument selection, most (almost all) of the original instrument PIs were still around. But most of them had shifted the less interesting parts of the job to deputies. And some recent proposal for long-duration missions have been expected to include plans to allow for that.

  7. Jack says:
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    Happy birthday NASA Watch.