Shuttle Launch
 

My brother Mike and I have been remodeling another Great Clips salon, since we have to work after they close and work till 5 am or so in the morning, it had us up at 4am for the launch.

We have seen the last 2 night launches, where the night becomes day for a few minutes anyway, the fish jumping out of the water, as the shock wave hits them from dumping a million gallons of water when the engines fire to take most of the sound into the water, you can see the sound wave in the water coming your way with the air full of fish.

Or it would shake windows 50 miles away, like they did on the first launch, lots of people there for the last night launch, cars were parked every where the last 5 miles going down to the river and I knew it was going to be a good one as it was 41 degrees and told my brother we would hear this one good.

So we timed it just right and drove as far east as allowed and were 5 miles away and you could see the shuttle across the Indian River and got there just minutes before they lit the fuse and parked facing the way home, only thing that sucked was I forgot the camera.

We found a great spot to park and got out with a minute to go in the count down, listening to the radio, at 10 seconds to go the main engines fire and lights the night up, at zero the boosters are fired and it becomes daylight so bright it hurt the eyes, a big flame heading for space.

At a mile above the ground we started feeling the ground start to shake about the same time as the sound hit us due to the cold weather, then your whole body was shaking with the bass hitting you like no boom box car could, my brother said you called that one, I never heard it so loud, only one word comes to mind COOOOOOOOL.

We stayed there till we seen the boosters fell away and start their tumble toward the ground, the sound dieing away in the distance, jumped back in the truck and headed back to work to clean up and go home, we were ahead of the crowd so we had a good trip over, showing up after the crowd got there and then got gone ahead of them coming back.

The only ones passing me were cops on the way back and didn't care if I was speeding as long as I wasn't in there way, so it was a great night and another memory we could put in the books as brothers.

What a night for all with the Super Bowl and then a shuttle launch to top it off.

:jump::jump::jump::jump::jump:

sounds like fun herb especially doing something like that with your brother:yeah:

last of an era too, and top that off with goofbama callin it quits on moonshots for now, great, one of the few great tech things in the us, and he turns it off.