Waiting on Endeavour...

My family and I traveled down to Orlando, Florida last week to watch the space shuttle Endeavour make her last trip to space. As you probably know, the launch got down checked for a couple of reasons, the weather and then an electrical problem.

The concern for the 7 lives and national asset of the Orbiter make our inconvience pale by comparison, but it would have been nice if we'd gotten this "task" behind us. It was very disappointing that they couldn't get the launch in.

We waited around Saturday and Sunday hoping for an attempt Monday, doing our "Plan B" going thru "Space Land" the KSC's visitor's center where we contributed to the local economy ($5.95 for a hot dog!!!) and my little girl got her exposure to everything space related, and then when the launch slipped to... later, we left and made a trip to Daytona Beach where we got her over her beach-phobia.

We still have our causeway tickets for the launch for whenever it comes. Hopefully work will allow all three vectors, Endeavour's flight readiness, the ISS's orbital plane, and our work schedules will coincide. Wish us luck!

Good luck! I hope you made it to the rescheduled Endeavour launch on May 16th. If you did, what was it like being there? What did your little girl think of it all?

Opps belatedly saw this.

Thanks. We made it. Despite having to drive down and basically spend all night in Orlando and the KSC visitors center, we got a pretty nice morning launch. Not being able to see it go over the horizon was offset by watching the pillar of fire go into the low hanging clouds.

Kiddo thought it was the most awesome-ist thing she's ever seen. We still get, "Three, Two, One. Blastoff!!!" whenever she is playing astronaut. That's what the manned space program is really all about isn't it?

http://imageshack.us/clip/my-videos/839/ll4.mp4/

Thanks for that very cute video!

My son (age 5) saw the final Shuttle launch live on a big screen in a shopping mall in North London, and he thought that was great. I think he'd love to have flown to Florida for it. Your daughter is very lucky to have actually been there and I'm sure she'll remember the experience for a long time.