Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Last two shuttle missions

How hard is it to get viewing space, hotel, etc for a launch? It'd be a hoot.

7 comments:

hale-bopp said...

I don't know about getting tickets to the launch...they closed the lottery for tickets to the next launch. The page is here.. I don't know when they will open registration for the last launch.

You should have posted this yesterday. NASA is having a Tweetup for the next shuttle launch. The idea is that twitters get together, watch the launch and tweet it. It is free. I signed up for it, but there are over 3,000 people competing for 150 spots...well, not competing...random drawing. Follow NASA on Twitter. Probably sometime in December they will open registration for the tweetup for the final shuttle launch.

Of course you can watch from offsite locations. For Shuttle launches, I recommend along the Banana River in Titusville. You get the best view of the Shuttle launch complex. Cocoa Beach is okay, but it really is better for the unmanned vehicles they launch (especially Delta IIs...you get a great view of Launch Pad #17 from Jetty Park).

Hotel rooms book fast in Titusville and Cocoa Beach. I have friends in Orlando so I stayed over there and drove over. Traffic will be a pain in the keester (fortunately, the bus I had to meet left from a mall in Cocoa...traffic wasn't too bad going there, but I could see the mess of people trying to go to Titusville!) Allow youself several hours to leave no matter where you go.

Anonymous said...

Huck. If you can't make it down there, come on over to my place. I still have a few bottle rockets left over from the 4th.

kkdither said...

I always wanted to witness a launch first hand. I'm sure it is awesome!

SER said...

I bet when those rockets fire up, the mosquitoes get the hell outta dodge!

It has to be awesome to see live; the power of the rockets, the smoke, the size of that animal lifting off the ground is mind boggling along!

If you ever get the chance to go to Dayton, Ohio, you have to make it a point to go to the Air Force museum there, it is free and you can see some of the original space capsules there.

SER said...

Here is a link to the museum

” Air Force Museum”

hale-bopp said...

And here in Tucson, we have the Pima Air and Space Museum which claims to have the third largest collection in the world (behind the Smithsonian and the Air Force Museum).

You can also take a bus tour of the famous boneyard.

OrbsCorbs said...

I also think that the "shock and awe" of a rocket launch must be spectacular. I'd like to be as close as possible, without harming myself.