Nathan's Occasional Blog

When I was still at TechEd in Orlando last Friday I had the opportunity to see the Space Shuttle lift off.  Some of the guys from my office skipped a few sessions on the last day of the conference to head out to the cost for a good view.  I didn’t, but I still got to see the show from about 45 miles away.

IT WAS AMAZING.  Definitely something burned into my memory for the ages.  We saw the craft from shortly after liftoff,  through booster separation, and until the then-tiny spec of light disappeared.  It was so awesome to actually see the rope of fire coming from the engines.

Here are a couple of pictures courtesy of folks who posted pictures to Flickr that are pretty close to what we saw.  Click on each picture to link to the original up at Flickr.

I was probably standing about 50 feet from where this photo was taken, so this is the best example of what we saw during liftoff.  This picture was taken after the solid rocket boosters burnt out as the contrail just dies out.
 

 Later in the evening the contrail morphed into an amazing display.