Astronaut Not Really Tweeting From Space. Dang!

Well, that just bursts my bubble. Astronaut Mike Massimino was not, in fact, sending tweets from space, and in fact did not send the first tweet from space that we thought he had after the space shuttle Atlantis launched to meet the Hubble about 1 1/2 weeks ago.

No, instead he's been emailing NASA and they've been posting for him. That means despite the fact that he posted his first tweet about the launch shortly after Atlantis reached orbit:

From orbit: Launch was awesome!! I am feeling great, working hard, & enjoying the magnificent views, the adventure of a lifetime has begun!

that was probably set up in advance, as email often takes hours because as they are only transmitted from the shuttle a few times a day.

Do you feel cheated? I, and probably many bloggers and writers, do. On the other hand, despite that fact that this was revealed by the Orlando Sentinel, a friend of mine pointed out that Massimino made no secret of it, really. Witness this tweet:

I will be able to twitter from space if I have time. I will email tweets to NASA who'll fwd them. No promises but I will try my best.

Ah, well, we just got carried away, I guess. After all, as James Hartsfield, a NASA spokesman, said:

"It's as close as you can possibly get to a post from space. Anything you are going to do from space is going to pass through some type of hands before it gets to its final destination on the Internet. ... Maybe someday in the future, for the space station, they will have [Internet access], and then it can be a little more streamlined."