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Since I was about six, I have been extremely interested in NASA and the space program.  When I was 8, and then again 20 years later, I toured Kennedy Space Center.  When I was 11, I attended space camp.  The NASA website is one of the few government web sites that I visit frequently.  One thing that I haven’t done, however, is witness a space shuttle launch.

In college, I had a car pass to get my vehicle into the space center for a particular launch, but that launch was postponed until during my final exams so I was unable to go.  Last night, after getting home from work and settling into my winding down routine, my boss calls.  Since the shuttle was launching in the middle of the night, you could look a certain direction and see the trail of light in the night sky.  I thought it was ridiculous to get up in the middle of the night to see what would appear to be a shooting star.  I suggested that he drive down there, witness the launch, and drive back and be at work at 8am.

Long story short, less than an hour later he was on the road — with me in the passenger seat. 5.5 hours to Cocoa Beach, Florida.  We arrived an hour before liftoff and found the perfect vantage point:  10 miles from the shuttle, clear view across the Banana River from a pretty decent elevation.  Ten minutes before liftoff . . . .SCRUB!

So we drove back, disappointed and sleepless.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 at 1:24 pm and is filed under About Me, Current Events, Travel, Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.