Sidebar: The ULTIMATE in "Hurry Up and Wait" (and worth it!)

Or:  Seeing Your Tax Dollars at Work

On Thursday, February 24, I made a trek to Titusville, Florida, to watch the last launch of space shuttle Discovery.  Arriving about 11:00 a.m., it cost $20 to sardine-park along Washington Avenue (instead of Space View Park) which is the only viewing area outside the Kennedy Space Center, since tickets were only available on a lottery basis to watch it there.  Then there was an almost six-hour wait until 4:50 p.m. for the scheduled lift-off (with the possibility that it could be cancelled up to minutes before and everyone's trip wasted).  We were a large crowd (I was told this was the largest number of visitors ever) directly across the Intra-Coastal Waterway at a distance of 13.5 miles, but with a clear view; this is how the lift-off looked through my old Canon camera with  telephoto lens.  But even by the naked eye, it was quite a sight to behold.  The roar of the engines took seconds to reach us,  it wasn't quite as loud as expected.

Postscript:  Here's probably one of the best views of the launch ever.