Godspeed, Discovery

As you may have heard, the shuttle did take off last night. We didn’t go out to Cape Canaveral because launch probability was still at 30% late in the afternoon, and it wasn’t worth disrupting dinner plans to drive to the coast. However, as we were sitting with Tom’s parents having a post-dinner discussion of our Belize plans, complete with maps, Mel decided that he desperately needed to go for a walk. So, we leashed the dogs and headed out, just in time to see the entire sky light up at the end of the street. Neighbors who had been watching the launch preparations on TV came pouring out of their houses into the street. It wasn’t difficult to see what was happening – the sky lit up, and then a huge fireball went soaring into the sky, bright enough to throw light on the ground even where we were standing, probably 45 miles away. The fireball stretched out and dimmed a bit, and then we could see the separation of the rocket boosters and the two flaming objects drew further and further apart. The shuttle gradually grew smaller as it headed up, and the rocket boosters that had separated dimmed and disappeared. It was an amazing sight, and it’s mind boggling that people were inside the fire ball shooting into the sky. Godspeed, Discovery.

Here’s the link for the launch blog, which has video of the launch. It’s amazing to me that they lifted off at 8:47, and by 9:00 were in orbit. We hadn’t even reached the end of the block with the dogs!

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts116/launch/launch-vlcc.html