To the Moon!

O.K., not exactly the moon, but to space anyway. As some of you may know, Robert works at the Kennedy Space Center, so he's privy to all kinds of interesting stuff regarding the Space Shuttle. (I capitalize those words because it's still, after all these years, a totally cool thing that we Americans are insanely patriotic about!)

As some of you may also be aware, there was a launch today. So I decided to post a few of his pictures. They're not great. He took them with a little digital binocular camera that he keeps in his truck. He always forgets to take my good camera, for some reason. I think he's just gotten used to being out there and he doesn't think about it any more.

This one is taken early in the morning. The date is wrong, too, obviously. It's a little blurry, but you can see the shuttle, lit up like a Christmas tree.

I love this sign. They do a running countdown at KSC and I love the one that has the "0 Days to Launch" on it. You can just see the Shuttle Assembly Building in the background. It's huge in person.

These next ones are from the last Night Launch. We were able to take the kids to this one and, I have to say, there is nothing on earth like it. KSC issues a limited number of special access passes for each launch to employees and you are able to get unbelievably close. When that beautiful thing took off, it lit up the sky like it was 12:00 noon. And you could feel the heat of it and the quake of those massive boosters even from a mile away. It was insane!

I have video of this launch. Maybe I'll post it, too.