Into the black sky

Although space flight has become fairly routine -- except when it isn't -- I still find it fascinating. I'm fairly obsessed with flight in general, but the notion that people go up into space is quite novel to me.

That's the only explanation for the last hour-plus which I've spent watching the countdown to launch of the shuttle Endeavour (STS-118) on NASA TV.

It got pretty dramatic there for a while - they couldn't get confirmation that the door to the shuttle was latched correctly. Pretty embarassing, if you ask me. Kind of like my US Airways flight a few years ago, which got canceled after they couldn't start the airplane. (This is true.) Trouble closing the space shuttle door isn't exactly what NASA needs these days, with drunk- and jealous-lover-astronaut scandals. Then again, nobody's really watching right now anyway. Except the bored and unemployed.

I don't really understand why the countdown to launch has planned hold times. At T-20 minutes, the clock stops ticking for 10 minutes. At T-9 minutes, there's a 42 minute break. Doesn't this all defeat the purpose of a countdown? Is it just NASA's way of admitting that a 43-hour countdown simply isn't long enough?

Here's where you can see if/when the shuttle will be visible in the night sky in your neck of the woods. You can even host a Star Party!!

It seems odd to me that Seth will probably never remember seeing a Space Shuttle fly. They're scheduled to retire in 2010. Also strange to me is the fact that the replacement, the Orion spacecraft, isn't going to be ready until 2015 or so. That's a long time to go without any US manned spaceflight.

Anyway, kudos to NASA for maintaining a launch blog.