About Irene Klotz : Discovery Space : Discovery Channel

Irene Klotz

Blogger for "Free Space," Space Reporter, Columnist, Author

Irene Klotz

Arthur C. Clarke once said that truly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Irene likes to keep that edge in play. She's seen here at the mission control center for NASA's Phoenix landing.

Irene Klotz lives near the only place in the country where people can go to leave the planet. Wait a minute. It used to be, before Burt Rutan & Co. built that beautiful little spaceship which did the Alan Shepard show three times -- in the same vehicle -- from California's Mojave Desert. She finds all that fascinating for some reason. Maybe she didn't get out much as a kid.

Klotz came to Brevard County, Fla. (aka The Space Coast) as a copy editor for the local paper 24 years ago. She switched to writing because it was obvious the reporters were having way more fun than the editors for the same money. After a year or so of writing for the business section, she was recruited to join what Florida Today called The Space Team: four writers, two editors, with the universe as its beat. This was back when NASA was gearing up for its first return to flight following the 1986 Challenger accident.

Many companies, including Discovery Communications and its offshoots, have kindly and generously commissioned Klotz's work since she left the newspaper at the end of 1992, enabling her to keep a focus on space.

One of those companies was SPACE.com, a startup headed by CNN's Lou Dobbs. When she met him for the first time, he asked her, "Do you love space?" She told him yes, and explained her attraction to people who were passionate about what they do and eager to participate in events that were bigger and more important than one human life, even (especially) if that life was their own.

He wasn't satisfied. "Do you LOVE space?," he asked again. "Yes," Klotz assured him, and went on to talk about how she saw the space program as a bookmark in the story of human evolution, and about how profound she found it that it was at this time in history that she lives, this time when people first found a way to defy the laws of gravity, that master of the universe, and transport their machines and their bodies to a place where continents become the proverbial trees in the forest, and beyond.

Dobbs wanted more. "But DO YOU LOVE SPACE?" She eyed him warily and said, "I love my son more." That worked. Dobbs leaned back in his chair and started talking about his own family. That's what she most loves about the space beat: how it uncovers our humanity.

Check out Irene's "Free Space" blog and be sure to read her regular work at Discovery News. Want to contact her? Try spacebirds@gmail.com.

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Irene Klotz

Irene Klotz

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