Travis and Michelle Fitzgerald's blog

Michelle and I have been wanting to see a launch together for a long time, and we tried various ways to get official launch tickets to see this launch, but those efforts failed. So we decided to just head to Florida and figure out the best place we could to watch. We ended up being able to use our badges to get us onsite at KSC, and chose a parking lot next to the legendary Vehicle Assembly Building (VA as our vantage point. We were able to figure out that we were about 3.4 miles from launch pad, and about a quarter mile from the spot that the VIPs were watching from (so this was as close as you could get without being run off by security).

We couldn’t hear the loudspeaker well, but there is no doubt when it launches. It took a few moments after the engines lit for the sound, vibration, and heat to reach us. Yes, you could feel the heat from our vantage point. Incredible! Enjoy the pictures (taken with our nifty Canon Rebel T1i with the 55-250 mm lens).

You can go here for larger pictures.

The view to our left.

The view to our right. The balcony on top of that building is probably an awesome place to watch.

The palm trees that provided us with shade.

A mockingbird (the state bird of Texas) watched the launch with us.

Here we go! The rest don’t really need narration.

This last picture is a cropped picture, and if you look closely you will see the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) have just separated from the the rest of the Shuttle. You can see the engine glow from the Shuttle. The Shuttle was 32 miles downrange when I snapped this picture.