Just watched the space shuttle Discovery from my front yard 140 miles away.... how cool is that?

Subject says it all. Cape Canaveral is 140 miles south of my house. You can watch the shuttle launch on TV... wait about 5-10 seconds and then walk out in the front yard to see it streak across the Atlantic on it's way over Africa for about 10 seconds. I can't see the booster rocket separation, but you know when it happens because that's essentially where the visible smoke trail and engine's are no longer visible. But for abotu 20 seconds, you can clearly see the engine fire even on a sunny day. Never ceases to amaze me how fast is streaks through the sky even this far away.

Technorati Tags: space shuttle,discovery,sts-124

posted on Saturday, May 31, 2008 5:33 PM

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# re: Just watched the space shuttle Discovery from my front yard 140 miles away.... how cool is that? 6/1/2008 1:23 AM Sahil Malik

From WikiPedia, the shuttle's top speed is 17,321 mi/h.

In comparison, the SR-71, fastest plane ever was Mach 3, and that flew at apprx 2200 mph, and it holds the record for a London to New York flight of 1 hr 54 minutes. Concorde in comparison is around 3 hours. And a regular 747 is around 7 hours.

It takes a regular passenger jet about 2.5 hours to fly from DC to Florida. It takes about 16 hours to drive from DC to FL.

So, if I was travelling from DC to FL in a shuttle, that 16 hours of driving time would be compressed to about 5 minutes, 20 seconds!

THAT is how fast that shuttle is.

# re: Just watched the space shuttle Discovery from my front yard 140 miles away.... how cool is that? 6/1/2008 7:32 AM John Ross

I can't tell you how many times I've watched the shuttle including yesterday. Its always very cool. Although, being close also means that when the shuttle returns to the atmosphere the double sonic boom shakes our windows -- many times in the middle of the night. I've run around my house more than once in a half-sleep state thinking someone is breaking into my house before I remember that it is just the shuttle coming back to Earth.

-John

# re: Just watched the space shuttle Discovery from my front yard 140 miles away.... how cool is that? 6/1/2008 10:15 AM AC [MVP MOSS]

Sahil-
Funny you use that train of thought. 6 minutes after launch I called my dad and said "so, that 8hr, 470+ mile drive we do to our house in western North Carolina... well at this point hte shuttle just blew right past it in less than 6 minutes!"

# re: Just watched the space shuttle Discovery from my front yard 140 miles away.... how cool is that? 6/1/2008 9:27 PM Sahil Malik

Yeah, but even if I had a shuttle, I'd still get stuck in the DC traffic!

# re: Just watched the space shuttle Discovery from my front yard 140 miles away.... how cool is that? 6/4/2008 5:02 PM alowe

It was cool for sure. Saw it from Lemon Bar in Neptune Beach.

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