Space Shuttle Atlantis, as seen from Gator Town

[Menolly]

Courtesy of news.ufl.edu/snapshots/2009/11/16/



From here, the night time launches are far more impressive, with the giant orange fireball at the top of the column of smoke. But these daytime launches are just as awe inspiring. We are privileged to witness them.

[rdhopeca]

Awesome. We watched Discovery launch last June from a mall parking lot in Orlando...it's just an amazing feeling to watch it go up for real instead of on tv.

[matrixman]

On a related note: we're nearing the end of an era, aren't we? After 2011(?) NASA will be retiring its shuttle fleet. The space shuttle has been a presence - if a far away one - in my life since the Enterprise in 1979 that helped promote Star Trek: The Motion Picture (and vice versa). Too bad that first shuttle never actually flew. A few years later, my sis ordered one of those commemorative NASA jackets that had the names of the astronauts from the inaugural shuttle mission. It was pretty cool; I always envied it. Then in '86 there was the Challenger disaster, an event seared into my mind. I still remember exactly where I was and what I was doing that day when I heard the news. Then in the 90's I got to experience a couple of IMAX films featuring the space shuttle. Seeing and feeling a shuttle launch in IMAX is the closest I'll likely ever get to the real thing. And seeing Earth's surface from the shuttle's perspective in IMAX was spectacular, too. So, yeah, the space shuttle has been a force in my imagination. I will feel more than a twinge of sadness when the last shuttle mission ends.