Too windy to fly- except for the big stuff!

[Bill Heher]

Kind of breezy yesterday so we drove over to the coast, heard something might be going on by Merrit Island. Beautiful day as we watched / Celebrated Americas unmatched and soon to be retired Space Shuttle Atlantis roar off the pad and into orbit. Pic of Atlantis on the pad was taken by holding an I-phone up to the eyepiece of my telescope with left hand wrapped around eyepiece to make a light shield / adapter. Not bad for almost 10 miles away.

Awesome, breathtaking, pride stirring and humbling all at the same time.
 
What a statement of our times. We own the best manned orbital heavy lift system currently flying, the only reusable (30+ times for Atlantis) spacecraft, something other nations can't even come close to achieving, and we are going to park it in the weeds.  

 Sigh......

[Bill Hodges]

I watched the launch from the beach at Matanzas Inlet, about 15 south of St. Augustine.  Impressive as always.

The shuttles are indeed truly remarkable machines.  Sad that the program is coming to an end.

Bill Hodges

[john e. holliday]

Can you hear them from that distance?  In Ala Magordo NM(spelling) is a space museum if it is still there that you could hear recordings of different rockets going up.  Hard to beleive it has been 15 years since we were there.  It was first trip to VSC.  I could see the snow capped mountain and White Sands, we were still miles away. 

[FLOYD CARTER]

Nothing beats watching a Minuteman missile launch from a vantage point less than a mile away!
I worked at the Vandenburg Tracking Station for a while.  Although the tracking station was about 2 miles
from the launch complex, a group of us were closer in one day, when the Minuteman fired off. 
The launches were not announced, at least to us, so it was a surprise and a humbling
experience being so close to all that noise, smoke and flame!

Floyd

[thomas farmer]

Great pictures, the shuttles are way past thier time, it'a shame the USA did not develope next generation shuttle, with the war inthe east and all the giveaways to undeserving countries, it looks like the space program might fade away.

[Clancy Arnold]

I have fond memories of visiting the cape in the 1970's.  The size of those rockets are mind bogging.  I wish I could find the pictures I took on that trip.  To get a perspective on the size of things I took a picture of the Greyhound size bus we were on parked beside one of the transporters. It was smaller than one of the eight crawler treads on the transporter. 

They told us that the transporter, even going up a hill, would keep the rocket vertical within 6 inches.

Clancy