pad being illuminated. We kept watching in that direction, and right on time (7:55) the entire sky lit up like it was daylight. About 10 seconds later a huge fireball came up over the buildings and we watched as it went up in the sky, leaving an incredible cloud of smoke in its wake. Because of our distance we could never see the outline of the shuttle, it only ever looked like a fireball, but it gave me chills to watch it. The sky was clear and beautiful and we were able to see it for a long time, until it looked like a tiny star in the sky and then disappeared. It was so amazing to be looking up at the sky knowing you were watching people travel to space. I've seen launches before on tv, but it is nothing like standing watching it. The only disappointing thing was that we never heard or felt it. According to some of Jimmy's co-workers at KSC, it is really unusual not to be able to hear or feel it and they suspected it had to do with the direction of the wind. Even still, how cool is it to say the last night launch of the shuttle happened on your birthday, right after you move down, and you're able to watch it from your backyard??? We spent the rest of the weekend hanging out and consuming to many alcoholic beverages, but we had a great time!
Hopefully I can come back and add some pictures we took over the weekend, but for the time
being these are a couple I snagged from NASA's website.
This one actually looks pretty similar to what we saw only from further away.
And this one give you a good idea of how beautiful the moon was that night.
Jimmy is planning to get us on center to watch the next launch, so hopefully this is what we'll actually see the next time.
"I think we're going to the moon because it's in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It's by the nature of his deep inner soul... we're required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream." ~Neil Armstrong
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