Do you still watch space launches?

[Schwarzer Ritter]

NG 2 just launched from Cape Canaveral (3:55 EST). It's carrying multiple probes to orbit Mars. Thousands cheered the textbook launch and those thousands cheered louder for the landing of the first stage booster upright on a platform!
I remember watching most of the launches. I had a poster in my bedroom of all the capsules and rockets. I remember watching the moon landing glued to the chair literally. (It was a sweaty July and the chair was naugahyde.

Me? I'm watching now and when it gets to Mars.

[Mort Watt]

You forgot to have a selection of "I try to, but regretfully miss most of them."

I picked the closest choice.

I am often in Central Florida.

I really wanted to see NG 2, even though it was a daytime launch and I would have been 25+ miles away. But good for them! They needed this success.

I wanna see this big bastard go up at night. And Artemis. And Starship. The Saturn 5 would have given me massive wood if I had been old enough to have wood back then. But these babies...whoohoo! Light the fucking candle!

(I built a Saturn 5 model when I was a little kid. I forgot to wash my hands when I put on the decals and it had filthy little-kid fingerprints all over it. I didn't care! I forced everyone that I knew to watch me show them all of the stages and how they worked. I paid ZERO attention to their yawns and glances at their wrist watches)

[Schwarzer Ritter]

I saw a night time launch of the shuttle from Port Canaveral. The solid fuel boosters were tied off next to the ship I was working on. A couple of years later, I saw shuttle transporter flying over NOLA with a shuttle on board.

[Mort Watt]

They say those solid-fuel booster launches were fucking spectacular. Even more so than Saturn 5.

[txdot-guy]

I watched most of the launches during the construction of the ISS as well as most of the spacewalks.

[Precious_b]

Mort, you should go to the Johnston Space Center.
The display of an actual Saturn V is worth the trip alone.
I was in awe of it. Took a friend from europe and he loved it too.

[Mort Watt]

Originally Posted by Precious_b

Mort, you should go to the Johnston Space Center.
The display of an actual Saturn V is worth the trip alone.
I was in awe of it. Took a friend from europe and he loved it too.

I have seen the one they have at Kennedy several times. But from pics, it looks like the one at Johnson is better.

[Why_Yes_I_Do]

I'm more impressed with the "chopsticks" catching the booster when they return. That's some ba-dass chite right there.

[Mort Watt]

Yes, catching the boosters is way cool. I gotta get over to the Cape when they land one there to see it up close. I have seen them from a distance, high up as they descend, firing their maneuvering jets. That is pretty cool to watch.