OT: Shuttle geeks ..

Countdown started a few minutes ago. Just under three hours before launch,
which means we won't be able to see it jetison over Southern England, I
guess :(

Oh well, 24 hour delay.

Ok, who pressed the Jog button?

I pressed rewind, was that bad?

I left it well alone today. Am not sure about that previous report about
viewing from Southern England. Okay, it would have been nighttime, but it
was 20+ minutes before it was passing over here and it would be too high to
clearly see? I guess as the engines may still be on burn, but am not
entirely convinced.

You'd only get to see it if
a) it was night here, and
b) the shuttle and tank- working up to, in this case, an orbit
with low and high points of 116 and 143 miles- were high enough
to be still in sunlight.

That's a fairly tight set of requirements, and the fact that
there was a chance of it happening was tied in with the
requirement for them to photograph the tank after separation,
about 9-11 minutes after launch.

That was only going to be a requirement for the previous mission
and this one. They hoped those two missions would give them
enough confidence in the foam to be able to manage without that
constraint, which will help a lot in keeping to their
construction schedule.

Results so far look good:

By the way, who was it who wanted an Airfix shuttle? Mail me...

Anyway, was viewing the quicktime feed and got a little worried about one of
the controls ...

"Jog Shuttle" ... hmmm ... better not press that one I guess.