NASA Shuttle Launch Seen From Jackie Robinson Ballpark

Once in a while your in the right place at the right time.  I was in Daytona Beach, Florida today checking in with the Cubs and the City on Jackie Robinson Ballpark and coincidentally, NASA had scheduled a space shuttle launch of Discovery at 11:38am.  Having lived in Florida for 11 years, I had witnessed this event on several occasions.  The night launches were quite spectacular even from where I lived in West Palm Beach which was  over 3 hours away from the Cape.  It occurred to me that I had not witnessed a launch since the late nineties. Cape Canaveral is about 100 miles from Daytona Beach?s Jackie Robinson Stadium which  sounds pretty far away but not when your talking about burning a gazillion gallons of fuel in the sky. The shuttles fire plume is quite large in these photos and my camera is only a 5 mega pixel.  Even with the space shuttle lifting off just under a 100 miles away, we could still faintly hear the roar from the rockets.

Darrell and Zach ( our two sports turf managers ) responsible for the Cubs Home Field were raking in the rye grass seed and even they took a break to witness a little history.  After seeing a few of these over the years the locals kind of have a ..?oh is that today? type attitude which is normal when you live so close to something that is a common occurrence.   The fact that our country can send someone into space pretty much anytime  continues to amaze me.  Go NASA!