I watched the space shuttle launch tonight.

I believe you answered that earlier.

 

Touche! ;D

 

I'm so bummed that I missed the launch. I planned on watching it on the NASA channel, but I was a bit under the weather and apparently unconscious at the time.

 

It was a long day, but me, hubby and six year old spent the day at a park along the Indian River in Titusville. Watching that shuttle go up was unlike anything I've witnessed. It rises much slower than you'd think. The exhaust plume took on golden and blush tones in the setting sun. When the ship rolled, it was away from us and with binoculars, we were able to see right up the backside of the ship and the solid rocket boosters. She was visible for a long, long time and so were the SRBs after they separated -- which I saw through the binocs. I highly recommend that anyone do this.

 

A question for any florida natives familiar with this - I saw something after the launch - the smoke plume heading towards the south and a huge cloud a little further down and it looked like they had spotlights on them. I don't know if it was the moon or setting sun reflecting on it or spotlights from the beach area but it was an odd and beautiful site. Anyone know what that is? I was about 2 hours south of the launch and didn't see the actual launch.

 

Chris, I've seen several of these from about your position, and this was the first one up close.. I've never noticed that gray smoke plume that trailed south.. but I saw it yesterday. Maybe it was because there sky was so clear? There wasn't a cloud around.

 

Another launch scheduled for 4:39 Sunday morning. It's the last nighttime launch, so I'm excited my bro-in-law scored the car passes to view it from the base tonight.

 

I used to watch the launches when I lived in Florida and I unfortunately saw the Challenger explosion. It was such a clear day you could see it for hours. I'm going to miss the shuttles. It's the only thing that seems to tie us to any sort of space exploration anymore.

 

Miss them? Didn't Obama breathe a little life into the program last week?

 

I thought they were ending in a year or two.

 

There are four more shuttle launches, finishing in June. Then my sister's unemployed. She works for one of the contractors.

 

Hardly. He basically pulled the plug on the manned space program, as a sacrificial lamb for the budget-deficit screechers.