It has been a few years since I last watched the space shuttle launch on TV. I knew the launch had been postponed on Monday and was rescheduled for this evening. I remembered at 4:55 pm Central Daylight Time to look online to see if a live feed was available (we don't have a digital converter box yet). I saw that the launch was scheduled for 3:03 PDT, wondered why it was listed in Pacific time when the shuttle was launching from the East Coast, quickly did the conversion to Eastern time and excitedly found a live feed on NASA's website. We started watching at t-minus five minutes - just in the nick of time.
As the kids and I watched, we marvelled and wondered aloud if Jesse made it to see the launch. He has been in Orlando this week for a training class. He had called us Monday from Cape Canaveral disappointed that the launch, originally scheduled for that evening, had been postponed until Wednesday due to lightning storms. He was not sure if he would be able to come back, but the group he is with, all nerdy engineers (oops, don't tell Jesse I said that) who, like Jesse and I, grew up watching the space shuttle launches on TV- even in school - decided for a second try.
Jesse called five munutes after launch and told us he had seen it!!! He was on the eastern side of the island watching in person as the Space Shuttle Endeavor launched!!! His main comments about the sight were that first, he was amazed that the sound of the rockets was slow to travel to where he was and second, that the shuttle quickly disappeared into the clouds, while we here at home kept watching via NASA cameras for the rocket separations. I asked him if the ground shook, but he said he wasn't close enough to actually feel it. (I thought that that the power of the booster rockets was so great that you could feel it for miles - obviously, I was naive.)
We are very excited for Jesse! He said proudly he could cross "watching the space shuttle launch in person" off his Bucket List.
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