Anyone see the shuttle launch? I'm between houses and just now getting cable hooked up. Some of the"news" is good to miss but things like this its a bummer.

Something stopped the countdown with 31 seconds to go, but then they found it whatever it was turned out to be okay, so they started the clock again. That 31 seconds went by SO fast! It was like:
"We're going!"
"We're NOT going!"
"Oh, okay, we're going!"
"We're gone!"

The launch was beautiful, wonderous and saddening, I watched it knowing it's the last of the shuttle flights. My understanding is we, NASA is developing another rocket similar to what the Russians used, until that is done, we're going to be paying the Russians to get there.

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Ron

[This message has been edited by blackrams (edited 07-08-2011).]

I didn't watch it. It felt too much like a funeral.

quote Originally posted by Formula88: I didn't watch it. It felt too much like a funeral.

My thoughts exactly. Hearing that the weather cooperated enough for it to go was depressing.

I was a little late leaving for work, but I watched it. It was bittersweet as hell. I'd seen the onboard camera shots before, but this really got me choked up. Maybe it was partly the sadness of knowing this is the last shuttle flight, and it will be god-knows how long until we see another manned launch from the United States.

Beautiful and sad.

I had wanted to set it up in the conference room
like the last one, but things got busy...

Will watch it tonight, and get all 'sad'

quote Originally posted by fierobear: I was a little late leaving for work, but I watched it. It was bittersweet as hell. I'd seen the onboard camera shots before, but this really got me choked up. Maybe it was partly the sadness of knowing this is the last shuttle flight, and it will be god-knows how long until we see another manned launch from the United States. Beautiful and sad.

I think we will see commercial flights.. but i bet we don't see another NASA trip in my lifetime.

For all it's faults, Shuttle is an amazing vehicle. No other space vehicle has ever had anywhere near the capability of Shuttle. Even the planned replacements have nowhere near the versatility; however, Shuttle's mission was to build a space station and that it did. The International Space Station is one of the most important endeavors in all of human history. It's the first time we've had all these different nations working together in common cause to build a location that doesn't have lines drawn on a map somewhere. It is a vision of global cooperation that was inconceivable just 20 years ago. Kids who are too young to remember the Cold War don't fully appreciate how amazing it is that we are working hand in hand with our once arch enemies in space. That's something we've never been able to do as successfully on earth.

On July 15, 1975, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project was the final flight of the Apollo era, and the first time the U.S. and Soviet Union had met and cooperated in space. While largely a symbolic mission, it paved the way for our joint cooperation today on the ISS. It also allowed Deke Slayton, one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts, to finally make it into space after being grounded since 1962 due to an irregular heartbeat.

36 years after that historic mission, only Soyuz remains to lift mankind to the heavens.

We were here in Orlando, about 60 miles from the cape and we couldn't see it due to the cloud cover. Real bummer but atleast it went off withou a major hitch. -Jason