<p>Teacher Barbara Morgan will fly on the space shuttle Endeavor, scheduled for launch tonight at 6:36. Chance weather will be go for liftoff- 80%.</p>
<p>I’ll be watching from my backyard.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.floridatoday.com/floridatoday/blogs/spaceteam/[/url]”>http://www.floridatoday.com/floridatoday/blogs/spaceteam/</a></p>
<p>How much has been cut from the Space Program budget recently? I think a lot.</p>
<p>This teacher is also an astronaut. I wonder how much she teaches. </p>
<p>McCauliffe (Challenger 1986) was just a teacher.</p>
<p>Naturally, Laura called to wish Good Luck. I wonder if it was from Minnesota where she and Bush managed to show up the day following the tragedy. They learned from Katrina, maybe?</p>
<p>How did you possibly manage to try to turn a space thread into a Bush thread? Seriously?</p>
<p>edit: Good luck to the astronauts, by the way. I love the space program, and can’t wait for them to take the next step.</p>
<p>Yes, Barbara Morgan left teaching and is a full time astronaut. She was the back up chosen to Christa McAulliffe when the Teacher in Space program was prepping an actual teacher. She taught for a few more years after the Challenger explosion, then left the field and is a full fledged astronaut. Not a bad second career.</p>
<p>The Space Program should be 100% privatised, as it should have been from the start. Of course, this will eventually be.</p>
<p>No, it really shouldn’t. A lot of the research taking place aboard the Space Stations is not going to happen if it’s private. There’s a lot of good that comes out of the space program, more than most people realize.</p>
<p>How do you figure? I see the Space program as a government monopoly stifling innovation and competition. If it was opened up then we would see far superior and faster products. Entrepreneurs and profiteers would revolutionize the field. Remember the Ma Bell monopoly? I bet you would have made a similar argument for them.</p>
<p>Thanks for this news. If you’re ever near Concord, New Hampshire, stop in to the Christa McAuliffe Memorial Museum and small planetarium. She was originally chosen because she wanted to write a diary to inspire students, a very teacherly thing to do. Her husband eventually remarried, and their children grew up well.</p>
<p>I was looking at the “live video stream”…I can’t even imagine what it would feel like right now contemplating getting into that ship in just a few hours and blasting off into space. Talk about the ultimate rush. I get the willies just waiting in line for Disney’s Space Mountain ride!</p>
<p>Chuy, you answered your own question!</p>
<p>The astronauts have boarded Endeavor and are strapped in. Takeoff in less than three hours.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.floridatoday.com/floridatoday/blogs/spaceteam/[/url]”>http://www.floridatoday.com/floridatoday/blogs/spaceteam/</a></p>
<p>
Cool. How good of a view do you have? I’d like to see the shuttle launch someday. The closest I came to seeing it almost in the air was when I saw it atop the NASA 747 at Atlanta airport once back in the beginning days of the shuttle.</p>
<p>Seriously, Doubleplay, I’m jealous, how close are you? Can you feel any vibration underfoot? I get to see it in the sky sometimes, but am not physically close enough to see anything substantial or feel the impact in the ground…I keep saying I’m going to make the drive to get closer but haven’t done it yet. When I even just watch it on television, I just get sooooooo incredibly excited, then I get a lump in my throat…I can never tire of watching launches…</p>
<p>Edited to add: Doubleplay, your links get me a result that says “you are not authorized to view this page…”…how very odd…</p>
<p>What we see- </p>
<p>We don’t see the vehicle itself, that’s for sure! We see the giant smoke plume and the flame ball from the engines. We can see a burst when the solid rocket boosters detach. From our house we are 20-30 miles away (I believe) as the crow flies. I need to check that out on an aerial.</p>
<p>Tonight was very clear. Many times if it’s cloudy you can’t see as well, but usually it is clear.</p>
<p>The rumbling sound comes mUCCHHH later.</p>
<p>We get the big sonic booms when the shuttles are coming back in piggy back style. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage[/url]”>http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage</a></p>
<p>Do you get this page? I can’t understand why you wouldn’t get the page. If they ask you to fill out the questionnaire, do it- it doesn’t cost anything. I think they just want to see where you are from.</p>
<p>Doubleplay, how cool is that - I am soooo jealous…sometimes if the skys are clear I can see the shuttle, it’s a very, very bright light, brighter and larger than anything else in the sky. And I love sonic booms. I used to hear them, as a child growing up in Ohio - cannot recall from what though - something very big taking off or landing (???) fighter jets maybe… Wonder why the rumbling sound comes so much later…being that close I would have assumed you would hear it rather quickly…</p>
<p>By much later, I mean we hear the rumbling about a minute after lift off. It seems a lot longer than it is because by the time you hear it, the shuttle is already pretty high up in the sky. I looked at an aerial and we live a little under 15 miles away. We’re really fortunate to be a part of such an exciting program!</p>