Meeting New Friends and The Shuttle Launch

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Just after settling in some members of the Australian Embassy arrived in Jacksonville as part of their national tour visiting all the Australian Defence Members. There are three Australian families here and we all had dinner at the Harris Household. Jason Harris is a navy chief who also works at Mayport Naval Station with Fiona. The other Australian (James and his wife Leanne) is an airforce Navigator who works at Naval Air Station Jacksonville. We had an interesting dinner and discussed the forthcoming NASA shuttle launch which was scheduled to be the first night launch. The embassy staff made quick changes to their plan and decided to drive down and watch the lauch.

The next night Fi and I jumped in the cruiser and headed down to Cape Canaveral where the Kennedy Space Centre is located. It's about a 2 hour drive each way so it does take up a lot of time. The viewing area is about 2 km from the launch site, but you can just make out the shuttle and all the aircraft circling above. We braved the cold and listened to Ground Control speak to the Astronauts on radios that people in the crowd had bought with them. We got to the 5 minute count down and the launch was postponed due to high winds. So we drove home without having seen anything.

The launch was re-scheduled for 48 hours later, although the weather looked bad. There was a lot of cloud cover and the launch was given a 30% chance of going just as Fiona and left for the long drive down. We toyed with whether we should go or not and actually turned around to come home before changing our minds and heading down. Luckily we did!! As we drove down the clouds cleared and because of the poor prediction the crowd was quite small - we had a prime viewing platform. Once again we listened to the countdown and this time she went off. It was an amazing sight to see - A huge fireball lit up the sky like it was day, and the astronauts sat in a small metal shell on top of this explosive fireball. It was an amazing thing to see - one of man's greatest achievements. We drove home very happy we made the effort to get down there - now all we have to do is go and do the Space Centre tour!

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Photos

The Dinner
This is the collection of Aussies in Jacksonville

We have lift off
The shuttle's engines fire up!

Up she goes
The camera doesn't really capture how bright it was - it was absolutely amazing

Comments

[Nic]

space centre tour
you guys have to go back and do the tour, it is fantastic and the museum is great...well worth the trip, the other thing that you guys would love to , I know you are travelling around a bit, but if you do head up north north......go to washington dc...the smithsonian institute is fab and all the great buildings etc. however dc is dangerous at night so I found out back in 96. (weirdos running around everywhere!) also get to NY city if you can...it was fav place out of all the states....I hope Matt and I can get there so I can show him around and we can see where the twin towers were. I am still trying to convince Matt we should do our trip instead of him working all the time! anyhow guys keep us posted on your travels!

[Ando]

Hey Hey
Hey Nic, Trying to see if this comment stuff works. We are heading up to DC in April/May and we plan do NY over a week long period - just have to work out when!! It is the number 1 thing to do along with the National Parks. You know you guys are more than welcome to come over and stay as long as you want - there is heaps to do in Florida as you probably know and we have the spare bedroom and car here you can use for road trips.....Coming during the summer would be the best bet.