Shuttle Launch This Evening

[Master ACiD]

few years ago i was at atv fest in ocala national forest. at around 9pm someone yelled "hey the sun is comming up" which sounded stupid but i looked and sure enough it appeared as though the sun was actually rising at 9pm at night!
it turns out that the shuttle has launched, and the way the light went through the cloud cover it got widened out to be around the same size as the sun and the colour was very similar as well. we were about 60 miles away and all 200 people cheered and made lots of noise as the shuttle went up and saw the rockets drop off and finally the shuttle went out of sight into space.

it was the brightest thing i ever seen, when the shuttle was still low to the ground it really looked like the sun was comming up.

for you guys who havent seen it, you should go atleast once. its probably the brightest light you ever will see.

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

wayne, thanks for the photos! It's amazing to see how many jobs are directly linked to technologies from the space race.

So we're watching the lift-off of the shuttle on our trusty DVR. About 2 min's after lift off, the camera on the fuel tank fuzzed out for a couple seconds. As soon as that happened, my son looked at me, in a can't-believe-that-would-ever-happen voice and said "why did the TV do THAT?" I laughed. He's only 7 y.o. Trying to explain the technical difficulties in this situation to him was futile. It was fun nonetheless.

Kids are totally digital nowadays.

 

[toocrazy2yoo]

A thing of beauty, Wayne..

Look, after 5 years dancing on carriers (got me a couple of traps and launches as a passenger, too), witnessing thousands of launches off the deck over those years, it never failed to awe. It's dangerous, but what more noble, eh? I have nothing to contribute to the towering characters of science and engineering that fly those shuttles, but if they needed a guinea pig of a human being, for some reason needed ME (again, it's a fantasy, they don't need ME), man, I'd be down there by sunrise if they called me at sundown. And I'm 800 miles away. What a ride they get to take. I saw the Atlas of Mercury, Titans of Gemini, the Saturn V and Shuttles fly over the years, there's nothing like being there. Was very fortunate to have had a couple of relatives and friends of the family in the program over the years.

Aviators and astronauts and the folks that support them are truly amongst our best and brightest, which fits because many, many of them come from the Military. Dunno where we'd be without em!