Thanks to Matt Musick at Motherboard.tv for sending me this great video of people hanging out watching the last Space Shuttle launches.
By now it’s a somewhat common event, one that for most Americans is signaled by nothing more than a brief clip on the news. But a shuttle launch is still one of mankind’s most complex and massive undertakings, a carefully-primed $1.3 billion explosion that turns years of planning and construction into a spectacle that lasts only a few minutes.
But to some, it’s the spectacle of a lifetime. People come from across the country and the world to see it. They travel from Michigan or Alaska or England or Italy and line up along a worn river bank in Florida, waiting for hours, maybe days, to see a group of people embark on another journey, this one powered by rockets that do zero to 17,000 mph in 8.5 minutes. To the fans, the astronauts strapped into the Space Transportation System, as their ride is called, aren’t just “rocket jockeys.” They’re like rock stars.