Liftoff at Last

[krpalmer]

After delays because of a hydrogen leak and delays because of bad weather, the space shuttle Endeavour is in space at last. (I suppose the hydrogen leaks in particular made me wonder about this shuttle having been tasked for the possibility of a rescue mission for the last space telescope servicing mission, but I can envision repairs being accelerated in that case.) As this is the last space shuttle mission scheduled to have a Canadian astronaut on it, Julie Payette, I managed to watch the launch on television. I was also interested in her second mission because I once saw her in person, way back in 1992 when she had just been selected as an astronaut and I had got into a long weekend program for high schoolers to visit places connected to the Canadian space program and maybe build a little national unity in a year when a lot of people thought that needed to be done. In any case, there's still the rest of this mission to come.

Comments

[may-child.livejournal.com]

I watched the launch on CNN without intending to. I was channel surfing, landed on CNN, and thought, "Cool, the Space Shuttle launch." I thought it was a tape of an earlier broadcast, but then I noticed the countdown, and that the time was exactly three hours ahead in Florida (I live in California). I'd never seen a launch in real time.

[krpalmer.livejournal.com]

I keep track of the official NASA site and such, which lets me know when to tune in whether using online streaming or TV, at least so long as I'm not at work. (Of course, after the delays I can imagine the news channel people being kind of glad they don't have to fill time after a scrub any more...) There are only seven (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/behindscenes/shuttle_countdowns.html) launches scheduled after this mission, so I can think of you as being lucky to see one "live" when you did; there is something about "seeing it as it happens"...