It started last year when my Save Hiatus buddy Adam Levermore mentioned to me that he’d always wanted to see a shuttle launch, and I told him I was 2 hours away from them and could watch launches from my front yard.
Then this summer he mentioned he had a plane voucher and didn’t know what to use it for since he had no cash for anything once he went somewhere. I reminded him of the shuttle launches — which will be ending soon as the program winds down — and said I had a couch. And the plan was made… only I didn’t have a couch, so we figured we’d improvise.
Then it got better; NASA announced on their Twitterfeed that they were going to hold a tweetup and the 1st hundred people to register could attend. Adam and I both got in; his two friends who were going to accompany him didn’t, and elected to stay behind rather than split the party which, as we all know, always results in death and creepy music.
The deal with the tweetup was that we’d get a day of talks and touring, and watch the launch the next day (weather and pesky fuel lines permitting) from the press area, the closest you can get if you’re not rescue crew or actually sitting in the shuttle. We were psyched. This was going to be great, we’d get to see a lot of cool stuff, we could put up with the no-doubt boring talks, we’d get to see the launch, it’s be great.
As it turned out, we were wrong. It was much better than that.
I posted a gallery of the trip and the launch here, with commentary.