CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Fingers will be flying when space shuttle Atlantis blasts off today: About 100 of NASA’s geekiest fans will be on hand, pecking away at iPhones, BlackBerrys, laptops and other Twittering gadgets.
They plan to let loose with electronic messages — provided they aren’t so swept away by the afternoon liftoff that they fall uncharacteristically silent for a moment or two.
“I’ll be uploading stuff as it happens,” promised Steve Wake, 38, a computer programmer who flew in from Denver. “On launch day, who knows? I may be too excited about everything else to even think about doing that stuff. When it’s over with, I’m sure I will.”
Laura Burns, a software-systems engineer from Columbia, Md., has a strategy. She’ll have the words typed in and her finger hovering over the button so she can send a tweet at liftoff.
“I’ll have to be like juggling my iPhone and my camera and my eyes, and trying to get everything all at once,” said Burns, 33.
