NASA Website Analysis: Seeing is believing

• Reading about the Columbia disaster and seeing it are two completely different things. We read about it before every class analyzing NASA and what happened to cause the disaster, and it has always been interesting to me. However, logging onto the website and seeing the pictures of the different items that were recovered from the accident made it more of a reality to me and also made me even more interested. It's upsetting, but that upset is what made me more curious to explore the website and read the different detailed sections. The timeline also made it more real, and it was interesting to read how things changed over the course of a few hours or to see what was going on every few hours.
• The same thing goes for the Challenger disaster. When I looked at this website the first thing that caught my eye was the Transcript of the disaster. After reading what the communication was from the shuttle to NASA and then having it suddenly stop after an "uh oh" also made it more of a reality. The address that the President made to the nation was there to read, as well as the movie clips, which were disturbing to a degree.
• The NASA website portrayed a lot about the culture of their organization. The website was set up so that it could easily be looked around in, and the pictures were really good- and are what mostly caught my interest. I liked how there were so many different sections set up on the homepage for everyone from kids (where there were fun games) to different grade levels of students to adults and people that would want to work for NASA. There was also a special media/press section which had NASA's latest doings/findings listed for the public. The website showed a lot about NASA as an organization and portrayed them as a quality organization that knows what they are doing and where they want to be in the future.