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I'm in St Petersburg Florida today and was able to clearly see the plume AND the orange burner flame from 150 miles away. Man, I've got to get close to one of these launches. I assume it would be spectacular to say the least.

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Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.

Maybe it would just be decent, not spectacular.

It's hard to tell the difference sometimes.

I had a friend at IBM in RTP whose dad was the launch commander for every launch at Cape Canaveral from '66-'00. He got me tickets to their special viewing area (about 4 miles on from the launch site) for a shuttle night launch in '98, I think. It was about as cool as I could have imagined.

I visited his parent's house and his dad had a 20x20 room dedicated to launch memorabilia. My friend said the day that the Challenger blew up was the only time he ever had dinner at his house where no one said a word.

My grandfather, who was an avid photographer and had a condo on Cocoa Beach, has stills of Challenger blowing up. Pretty chilling stuff. - AB

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My dad is friends with Guy Bluford.(first african american in space) Guy invited us to see his launch in the shuttle. It was the first night launch and pretty damn spectacular.

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I have been wanting to go down and watch a launch, but just never had found the time to make it a priority.

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Richard Casto
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I use to live in Port St John which is literally right across the River from Cape Canaveral. At the time, it was part of Cocoa, now it's its own town. We could walk out our door and see all the launches, even the "secret" ones that were never mentioned. Hard to hide the vibrations of a rocket flying into space.

The best thing that I have to say I ever saw was when they had the Discovery land at the Cape. It was the first time they did that and even though the show wasn't better than a launch, it was better by far just to see the brick glide through the air.

One year my grandparents visited us during one of the launches and we went to the campgrounds to watch it. Pretty much as close as you can get without being an employee or special invite. That was somewhere between 4 and 6 miles away from the launchpad.

The Challenger however went up and down while I was in Kentucky visiting family so I missed that one. Sort of happy and sad at the same time that I didn't see that one in person.

during one of the early launches in '84 the shuttle itself was visible from my apartment in Daytona. typically all we could see was the exhaust trail.

one of the more popular places to watch is on the causeway to Cocoa Beach. kinda cool. pretty good seafood place up the road too.

Rebecca and I got to see Atlanis go up in 2001. It is one of the most memorable moments of my life. (I should try to find those pictures.) The sound is incredible. The sense of awe and pride I got watching that thing rise into space is only second to seeing my daughters being born.

The wildest space shuttle event I witnessed was seeing the smoke trail from the airport. No not one in Florida, I'm talking about RDU! It was a very early morning launch on a high inclination that brought it up the east coast. They said it was the first time they had ever used that trajectory for launch (I don't remember why they had to do it that way.) You could see this very thick arcing cloud off to the east as the sun was rising. I really wish I had a camera with me at work that morning.

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Todd Breakey
STS 42 - 1992 Sunburst Miata
Dammit!
"You souldn't play leap frog with a porcupine. You might get hurt." - Eliza

When we lived in Melboure we loved to watch the shuttle launch. We would get up on the roof of the house and watch until you couldn't see anymore then go inside and watch the 24-7 Nasa channel. A friend our ours worked with Nasa and was able to get us into a launch. I was amazed at how it lit the sky up like it was noon at ~1am. Then when you couldn't see it anymore and looked over at the launch pad and saw flames flying up!

What was always fun was when they landed in FL. You could feel it when it came back in! Was pumping gas one day and heard a loud boom and the windows in all the building rattled. Took a min to remember that there was a shuttle coming in that day!

Oh the days of Sunny Fl!

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Malia Fredrickson
Clear Waters Travel
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