On Tuesday I’m heading to Rocket City USA, Huntsville, Alabama, with filmmaker Mark Greene to shoot video with rocketeer Tim Pickens. Tim plans to test fire a hybrid rocket engine and then we’ll get a tour of his rocket shop and visit the historic test stands at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
The stuff at Marshall is closed to the public, so I’m looking forward to getting a look at (and filming) locations that rarely get attention. Tim tells me there’s a Saturn 1-B booster lying on the ground next to the test stand, just where engineers left it after a test-fire forty-some years ago. Amazing.
Mark got so excited about my book Rocketeers early on that he wants to pitch it as a TV show to cable networks. To do that properly, we’ll need to put together a pilot, which is where Tim comes in. Whether or not the full 13-episode series comes to be, we’ll have some great footage to post here, on my site, and elsewhere.
I’ll blog on location. Stay tuned.
Michael, if you can email me at simberg at transterrestrial.com, I’ve got a couple minor corrections based on a review copy of the book, if it’s not too late.