Space Shuttle ready for launch!!

[Cpt. Stewker]

STS-116 is going to be launching tonight at 9:35 pm eastern time. They'll be spending 12 days in orbit, and will be spending the majority of that at the ISS.

Heres a live video feed of the launch preperations and hopefully launch (if the weather holds out) in Florida, courtesy of Nasa TV.

http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?id=1369080&segment=149773

I live on the Florida coast only a lil ways north of the cape so I'm going to be watching it in person! Damn the space program is cool.... Too bad it is under funded horribly though...

[SUBMAN1]

STS-116 is going to be launching tonight at 9:35 pm eastern time. They'll be spending 12 days in orbit, and will be spending the majority of that at the ISS.

Heres a live video feed of the launch preperations and hopefully launch (if the weather holds out) in Florida, courtesy of Nasa TV.

http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?id=1369080&segment=149773

I live on the Florida coast only a lil ways north of the cape so I'm going to be watching it in person! Damn the space program is cool.... Too bad it is under funded horribly though...

Seems my copy of winamp is screwing up on this link. Must reinstall it.

-S

[Polak]

Sweden is following this launch closely since the first Swede in history will be launched into space.

[SUBMAN1]

Sweden is following this launch closely since the first Swede in history will be launched into space.

Its about time then that they get someone up there then!

[Polak]

I agree, the Swedish space program is actually very large, but to get a man up there has never been a big priority.

[Cpt. Stewker]

Update: It's now showing them getting into the shuttle and being helped strapped in. The running commentary on the feed is really cool and has a lot of neat info on what's going on. Talking about the astronauts, and what they are doing and etc.

[fredbass]

This is where I go to see the live feed and anything else going on with Nasa.

http://www.nasa.gov/

[Cpt. Stewker]

This is where I go to see the live feed and anything else going on with Nasa.

http://www.nasa.gov/

That's where I got the link to that feed i posted ;)

[fredbass]

This is where I go to see the live feed and anything else going on with Nasa.

http://www.nasa.gov/

That's where I got the link to that feed i posted ;)

Well now they know for sure. :up:

Edit: Looks like they've moved the launch time up. It's now 47 minutes until liftoff.

[Cpt. Stewker]

...snip...
Edit: Looks like they've moved the launch time up. It's now 47 minutes until liftoff.

Man, good thing I check this forum so often since i got SH3. I hadn't planned on going outside till 9:15 or so. :o:o
Thanks for the heads up.

[TteFAboB]

T minus 20 mins.

This is really fun, thanks alot for the link. :up:

[fredbass]

There will be a scheduled 45 min hold in about a minute.

[TteFAboB]

Damn weather. The clouds are going to ruin the show. Or the comentator is simply trying to grab my attention and keep me anxious.

[Cpt. Stewker]

Arghhh!!! Nooo!!!

They scrubbed the lauch due to weather. Thick cloud cover was the culprit. Aborted at T-minus 00:05:00!!

They are now discussing a 24/48/longer turn around (when they can launch next). Going to largely depend on the weather forcast. Unfortunatly it won't be a nigt launch probably, they are rather rare all together and I had never seen one with my own eyes :(

EDIT: well at least I got out and breathed some fresh air and got to talk to a lot of nasa buffs and general people that were out on the beach waiting to watch the shuttle.

[Cpt. Stewker]

Nasa's next launch attempt is going to be tomorrow night at 8:47pm ET. I'll try and take some pictues and post it for you guys.

Here's a quote from my MySpace blog that I did about what it's like to watch a launch in person:

The amazing thing is though is just how huge of an event these launches are. For example I watched the launch they had in September from my street in Daytona, 50+ miles away from Cape Canaveral, and I can hear it, HEAR IT, when it launches, it's a low rumble that slowly fills the air. You can feel it in the ground too, a tremor in the earth. Hows that for amazing? The sight of it is pretty cool too, too just watch these rocket, with a vast plume of smoke and fire go up into the sky and just... fade away... as it curves around the earth.

[Dowly]

Ok, the preparations are underway atm. The astronauts are just arrived to the scene and will soon board the shuttle.

Just over 2hrs to launch.

See it live in www.nasa.gov :up:

[fredbass]

oooh, I almost forgot. Thanks for the update. :sunny:

Actually the launch should happen in about 2hrs-20min, if all goes well.

The clock you see counting down doesn't actually tell you when launch occurs because there wil be a few scheduled holds during the process.

[Cpt. Stewker]

Aye, the countdown doesn't figure in many built in holds like fredbass said. These are times when they have "go, no go" run downs of all systems, switch computer's to launch configuration, and etc.

Here's a direct link to the feed if anyone is interested:

http://www.nasa.gov/55644main_NASATV_Windows.asx

The countdown clock is at:

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/3645/countdownto9.png

[fredbass]

The launch is in 5 minutes.

[Dowly]

Godspeed!

[Cpt. Stewker]

That was AWE INSPIRING!!! I have NEVER seen something so awesome in my life. I was on the phone with my dad trying to describe it all (he saw the apollo missions and the saturn V launches when he was in highschool in person so I think he knows what its like) after I got back to my house a few minutes ago. I got kinda choked up.

I wanna go!

EDIT: I'll post some screenies later as soon as I can get them on disc and transfered to my comp.

[fredbass]

I went out my front door but I guess there were a few clouds between here and there and I couldn't see it, darn.

[Enigma]

Im up in northern DE, and I was lucky enough to see it! :rock::up:

[Cpt. Stewker]

I'm tempted to take my camera to wal-mart right now, just to show you what it was like. I might still do that but heres a text description. I'll get some up tomorrow at the latest.

I was with a guy with a short-wave radio and nasa broadcasts it's launch activites over a frequeny we were tuned to.

The countdown started and when it reached the end. The whole and I mean the WHOLE southern sky lit up. It went from pitch black night to sunrise in a blink of an eye. When it first cleared the trees on the river it looked like a fiery sun coming up over the world. It went higher and higher, the jet of flame, going through one cloud after the other. We were sorta facing down the intercoastal river in Daytona (we were in a park) and as it went through the clouds you could see the water reflecting it all, as it went through the clouds. The shadow of the clouds would race across the water as the shuttle passed through them. It angled to the right and flew up and up, growing fainter. You could then see the boosters seperating from the main engine/shuttle, you could see the faint glow of them trailing behind the speck of light that was the shuttle and its engines. Soon after that, a few seconds, the shuttle became a shooting star, racing across the sky, until finally that too faded away.

Everyone cheered and clapped after it was all over. Was great to see the younger kids and quite a few of the teenagers and quite a few girls watching it with their parents or with their friends/relations saying how great that was or how awesome it was. Makes me extremely glad to see that some of those kids may some day carry on the space program because of what they saw tonight.

I'm never going to forget seeing that.

[TteFAboB]

The whole and I mean the WHOLE southern sky lit up.

No kidding. I watched it through the TV but it was quite impressive nonetheless. Looked like a giant fireball going up. The main engines firing up followed by the rocket boosters and the huge amount of smoke, what a show!

Thankfully everything went fine. For me it was over in minutes. For the passengers it must've felt like hours.

Congratulations to everyone involved. :up: I await their safe return.

[Cpt. Stewker]

Alright heres one of those pictures I promised. Unfortunatly, as I have discovered to late, my brother, who begged me to be the one to take pictures, is the worst photographer on the earth... period. This is the best I could find out of what he took, it doesn't do the scene justice. But is fairly impressive I say, it gives a good idea of how bright it was.

Place of Photo: Riverside Park, Daytona Beach
Time: Approx. 8:50pm ET
Facing: South
Distance from launch: 50 miles / 80 kilometers

http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/9332/blurryshuttlesmalluf6.jpg

[Cpt. Stewker]

The shuttle has just docked with the ISS. They will be spending 7 days aboard the station.

http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/8254/discoverydockingfs6.png