I have written about this before, but I live about 100 mikes from Cape Canaveral. I just saw another Space X launch from my back yard. What a beautiful view!

Oh how long have you lived there? Were you able to witness the Challenger disaster or any of the other shuttle launches?

I always wanted to make it to the US to witness a space shuttle liftoff but alas I've always been financially challenged.

I've always loved the idea of space flight but I just wonder have we (humans) got our moneys worth from innovations developed in space compared to all the money that's gone into space exploration over the years...

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On 4/17/2023 10:16 PM, Michael Borthwick wrote to Mike Dippel:

Oh how long have you lived there? Were you able to witness the Challenger disaster or any of the other shuttle launches?

I always wanted to make it to the US to witness a space shuttle liftoff but alas I've always been financially challenged.

I've always loved the idea of space flight but I just wonder have we (humans)
got our moneys worth from innovations developed in space compared to all the money that's gone into space exploration over the years...

My wife and I did see the last official shuttle launch way back when. We drove to the
Cape and were about 1 mile away from the launch site. Traffic snarled to a stop and we
just parked in the middle of the street, next to the astronaut museum and the police
museum.

We saw it 'live' from one mile away. That is the only one where we were able to see all
3 stages.

One thing that they are doing is to make our internet better by launching satellites into
space. I'm sure that they are helping to make us safer by doing some spy stuff as well.
Most of the current project are privately funded, so no cost to the public.

Mike Dippel

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Oh how long have you lived there? Were you able to witness the
Challenger disaster or any of the other shuttle launches?

Not the person you're replying to, but my dad flew with my brothers down to Florida to watch a couple of the Apollo launches. (He was an engineer for
G.E. and had working on some of the video equipment used.)

He flew with my sister and I down to Flordia to watch STS-02 go up, and then
a few years later one of the Challenger flights (not STS-51L, but I was watching that live on TV in school when that happened). His response the Shuttle launch was, "Meh...it's no Saturn V."

In 1997-1998 I was playing in a ska band down in Melbourne, Florida, which is about 20 miles south of the Cape. The shuttle program was going fast and furious at that point, so I believe there were about a dozen launches during the time I was down there. A couple of them I wasn't even aware of, just walking around outside and looked up and there was a Shuttle blasting off.

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Not the person you're replying to, but my dad flew with my brothers down to Florida to watch a couple of the Apollo launches. (He was an engineer for G.E. and had working on some of the video equipment used.)

Wow that must have been awesome to see! I can't imagine how the first few people into space at that time must have thought about it.

He flew with my sister and I down to Flordia to watch STS-02 go up, and then a few years later one of the Challenger flights (not STS-51L, but I

I think the space shuttle was the best looking space vehicle ever designed. I don't like these fancy new things that spacex has made.

launches during the time I was down there. A couple of them I wasn't
even aware of, just walking around outside and looked up and there was a Shuttle blasting off.

I simply can't imagine how it must feel to just be wandering down the street and looking up to see a rocket take off. The closest thing we have here is the local hoon in his hotted up rustbucket tearing up the street :/

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I simply can't imagine how it must feel to just be wandering down the
street and looking up to see a rocket take off. The closest thing we
have here is the local hoon in his hotted up rustbucket tearing up the street :/

Yeah, the launch schedule of stuff that *wasn't* Space Shuttle was pretty fast-paced, as well. They'd send up rockets on a (equatorial, I believe?) flight path that literally looked like they were flying horizontal across the sky, not going 'up' like the Shuttle did.

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* Origin: WalledCTTY (21:2/145)

I've always loved the idea of space flight but I just wonder have we (humans)
got our moneys worth from innovations developed in space compared to al money that's gone into space exploration over the years...

Well, depends how you look at that.
Direct money monetized back from the space... I dunno. Hard to calculate money value of knowledge.

But there is a lot of tech invented for space programs and that come from our near/orbital space that we definitively benefit from commercially in a way that may be comparable.

Think about GPS alone as an example.

-h1

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