Shuttle fanboy
One of my first memories of seeing things on TV is seeing the constant coverage of the disintegration of the Space Shuttle Challenger on January 28, 1986. While some part of me must have realized that the rocket taking off into the sky and suddenly becoming engulfed in a fireball wasn’t what was supposed to happen, it nonetheless fascinated me. I drew pictures of what I’d seen for quite some time after that.
Over time, I eventually became a fan of The Way It Usually Worked™. Combined with an introduction to the world of Star Trek a few years later, I became intensely interested in human spaceflight.
Later on, my family purchased a C-band satellite dish (the old ones, the big ones — this one was 8 feet in diameter) because we were too far out of town to get cable. With the dish, we were able to pick up NASA TV — live video from Florida for launches, from Mission Control in Houston, and often from the shuttles themselves in orbit. One of the coolest parts of having NASA TV was being able to watch video and photos sent back by Voyager 2 when it passed Neptune in 1989.
To that end, continuing developments in online media and interaction have made it possible to view NASA TV online. Click through to the NASA TV page to watch live video of tonight’s launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery on mission STS-116 at 9:35PM ET, and on through the next two weeks for ongoing mission coverage. For additional news and updates (often updated faster than NASA’s own site), check out Spaceflight Now, and their STS-116 Mission Status Center.
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December 8, 2006 at 1:26 PM
[...] Last night’s shuttle launch was scrubbed on account of weather, citing concerns about “cloud thickness and ceiling” over the ...