Wow!

All I can say is Wow!  The launch went off exactly as scheduled this morning.  When those solid rocket boosters ignited, it lit up the entire sky in the most brilliant orange.  Then when it cleared the trees you could see that the plume of flames from the engines was at least 3 times longer than the shuttle itself—over 300 feet!  It took awhile for the sound to reach us as we were over 7 miles away at the visitor center, but when it did, it was incredible!  You could feel the sound in your chest as the shuttle roared into space.  As it traveled toward space, there was a shuttle astronaut on stage narrating everything that was going on.  We watched as long as possible.  In fact, when the shuttle reached 200+ miles down range, it was still the brightest light in the night sky.  Shortly after reaching 200+ miles away, the shuttle disappeared and we had to watch the rest on the jumbotron.  What an experience!

As you may or may not know, this was the 5th to last launch of the space shuttle.  It was the 2nd to last for the Space Shuttle Endeavor and the last night launch of the shuttle program.  Even though we had the displeasure of a scrubbed launch attempt the night before and we had to fight crowds and cold for at least 6 hours both launch attempts, we had an incredible time.  So incredible, in fact, that we are going to try to get tickets for the causeway for the next launch, and we’re going to keep trying each subsequent launch until we land those tickets.  The difference between the causeway tickets and the visitor center tickets, beside the fact that the causeway is a full mile closer, is that at the causeway you can actually see the shuttle as it sits on the pad.  Where we were we had to wait for the shuttle to clear the trees before we could see it.  I will remember this forever.  It was surreal. 

Watch here over the next couple of days for me to post pictures from the launch.  I don’t know how well any off them turned out, but I will post something.