Abulsme.com

This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne, also known as Sam Minter. In addition to the blog below, be sure to check out the other sections of the site above and to the left! IM me on AIM as Abulsme or email me at abulsme@abulsme.com. Comments are always appreciated! Thanks!

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Tue 26 Jul 2005

And There It Goes...

And off the shuttle went. A bunch of people from work went out to the back parking lot to watch. As did people from some of the businesses around us. I had Brandy on the phone as she tried to watch from home. One person had a radio and was relaying the 3... 2... 1... stuff. It was fun.

I have to admit though, it was less impressive than I expected given all the buildup. The most impressive launch I've seen would still be the first one I saw down here. That one you could actually hear and feel as well as see. (And it was a night launch too, which made it even more impressive.) The shuttle, from the distance we were at... maybe 30 miles or so... 40 for Brandy... looked like a column of smoke with a white spot on top, and then the white spot went on its own for a bit and disappeared. But no hearing it, and no windows shaking. Which that first launch had... It was the Delta 2 sending Messenger to Mercury.

Oh well, next time we may have to get tickets and get a bit closer. :-)

It was still fun though. Good luck to them on their mission of course.

And looking forward to all the pictures from the many new cameras they added because of Columbia. There was already some good stuff on TV. Brandy Tivo'd it for me.

OK, back to work now...

	Abulsme - Tue, 26 Jul 2005, 15:02:46 UTC - Science
	Permalink and Comments [0 comments]

In Town This Time

This time I am in town, and we're coming up on a launch:

STS-114 Mission Status Center
(SpaceFlightNow.com)

1214 GMT (8:14 a.m. EDT)

T-minus 90 minutes and counting. Countdown clocks continue to tick down to T-minus 20 minutes where the next hold is planned. Countdown activities remain on track for liftoff at 10:39 a.m.

I'd like to be at home with Brandy and watch from the lanai. But instead I'm at work. While I'm working on a document I have to do, I have NASA TV streaming in a little window. When the time come, assuming the time does come, I'll step outside to see what I can see.