luke strawwalker
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Went down to Ellington field to see the shuttle flyover and landing this morning... it's about 65 miles east over there from my back door... It was REALLY cool...
I let Keira miss school to go with me... the final flight of the shuttle (at least from Florida to here) and the last time a shuttle will ever pass this way again is something historic... "something I can tell my grandkids about, Daddy??" "Yup!" She got into it, though she was "bored" with the hour and 45 minute wait since we got there plenty early (but parking was a breeze-- we were only about 30 yards from the NASA gate and we stood in line about 30 minutes before they let us in the "public" gate and so we got a really nice spot right up front by the rope barricade...
Here's some pics... weather was absolutely perfect for it... only got up to about 85 degrees today in the Houston area, and it was about 74 or so when we we arrived, with a light north breeze at about 5-10 mph... slightly overcast, but that burned off as the day wore on... We left about 12:15, but it was a little after one before we actually got out of the airfield and back onto the highway... the traffic was HORRIBLE...
I told Betty she should go see it, since it wouldn't be over about 15-20 miles from her school, and she was going to go until she heard there was a MINIMUM 1 HOUR traffic jam in BOTH directions just to get into the airfield... so after a long day teaching and a long afternoon working on playing catch-up with the myriad crap-tasks they constantly dump on teachers, she decided just to go home...
The shuttle did several flyovers of Ellington Field and the two main airports in Houston, downtown Houston, the San Jacinto Monument, and of course several flyovers of nearby Johnson Space Center just to the southeast... we could see them repeatedly circling around and flying over from our vantage point at Ellington... It was VERY cool!
Then, they finally returned, did one more low pass over the field, flew their downwind leg and turned in on the approach, and safely touched down... taxied back up right in front of us, turned straight towards us not 100 yards away, and taxied in and parked on the apron, and idled for a few minutes (cooling the turbines I'd suppose) and wafting that sweet smell of burned kerosene across the tarmac, and then shut her down... the military guys and gals out there moved the rope barricades up to within about 40 yards of the aircraft, and we got to see her "close up".... did I mention it was MAJORLY COOL??
So, after taking a ton of pics from various angles, and making our way down to the "NASA employee area" (which had been admitted through the south gate, by permit only, along with the press) we got some pics near the front of the aircraft near where all the TV news teams set up shop with their cameras to cover the landing. They were shooting stock footage for the report when Keira and I went in... she was wearing her "I camped in space" T-shirt from her JSC day camp last fall, and I was wearing my Curiosity MSL T-shirt... they especially liked filming her prancing down the edge of the curb toward the gate... an O-L-D fellow about 6-8 feet from me got interviewed for TV... he was a JSC volunteer and had his badges and volunteer shirt and a boony hat with B-17 emblems and stuff on it... and he was the right age to have flown one! That was a hoot to watch... sharp cookie... he said some political stuff which was absolutely true but which would undoubtedly get me banned, so you'll have to just miss out on his wisdom... too bad...
Anyway, after we got all our pics and soaked it all in a bit, we wandered back to the "display" area some JSC volunteers had set up... Keira got to try on an outer glove from a space suit, got her pic taken with some space food and a shuttle tile, and took her pic in a space-suit photo mockup. They had a HUGE model shuttle standing there with opening payload doors, so I took her pic there as well, along with a beautiful new model at 1/30 scale of the CST-100 commercial crew vehicle on an Atlas V rocket, with a single SRB. The Boeing/NASA folks were really nice manning that tent and were handing out bookmark/luggage tag thingys that Keira wants to put on her zipper pull of her backpack (probably get it stolen, so I hope she decides to do something else like display it). She got a lot of stickers and stuff, we touched a moonrock in a little portable trailer display thing with some cool Orion/SLS and ISS displays inside, and then made our way over to their open tent "sourvenir store"... Keira got her $8 worth of shuttle keyring, small astronaut figure (to launch in her rocket with an appropriate parachute-- he'll have to come back like Yuri Gagarin though-- under his own chute! She also got her a little flag from STS-135 (probably leftovers they were selling for 50 cents each to unload them). I lusted after a shuttle book but can't afford it right now...
Good times... The shuttle is scheduled to depart Ellington Field tomorrow at dawn, en route to refuel at El Paso, (interesting ain't it that they can take off from Florida, do flyovers of the space coast, fly over to Michoud and Stennis and do flyovers there, then zip across Louisiana and do a bunch of flyovers of most of metro Houston, but they have to refuel before they can get from Houston, which is already 100 miles west of the Texas/Louisiana border, out of Texas to New Mexico... darn big state, as anybody who's driven west of Sonora thru Iraan and Fort Stockton and on to El Paso can attest-- San Antonio ain't even half way! Anyway, they're supposed to fuel up there, fly out to White Sands and do some flyovers there, before continuing on to California... don't remember if they're doing flyovers of Andrews or Dryden and then flying into LA or the other way around...
Anyway, she shall not pass this way again... farewell and good luck! When the shuttle lands for the last time in California (at LAX IIRC) that'll be it... none of them will ever return to the sky again... That'll be it... Endeavour will make her last journey by ground transporter about 12 miles to the science museum which will be her final resting place, and 3 days later, Atlantis will make the same journey via ground transporter from the Orbiter Processing Facility at KSC up the road to the KSC Visitor Center's new shuttle pavilion they're building (which I got pics of when I was there a few weeks ago...)
That'll be the end of the shuttles... they'll belong to history, like the Saturn V's, Apollo, Gemini, and Mercury spacecraft before them...
Later! OL JR
An excited Keira and I wait in line in front of NASA building 990 at Ellington Field... we were about the 50th person in line...
A NASA jet arrives with some personnel about the time they let us in the gates...
A mess of Apache attack helicopters lined up on the apron just down the flight line from where we were waiting at Ellington...
First view of the shuttle and the SCA off to the almost due north...
A NASA T-38 Talon lands after playing chase plane with the SCA...
I let Keira miss school to go with me... the final flight of the shuttle (at least from Florida to here) and the last time a shuttle will ever pass this way again is something historic... "something I can tell my grandkids about, Daddy??" "Yup!" She got into it, though she was "bored" with the hour and 45 minute wait since we got there plenty early (but parking was a breeze-- we were only about 30 yards from the NASA gate and we stood in line about 30 minutes before they let us in the "public" gate and so we got a really nice spot right up front by the rope barricade...
Here's some pics... weather was absolutely perfect for it... only got up to about 85 degrees today in the Houston area, and it was about 74 or so when we we arrived, with a light north breeze at about 5-10 mph... slightly overcast, but that burned off as the day wore on... We left about 12:15, but it was a little after one before we actually got out of the airfield and back onto the highway... the traffic was HORRIBLE...
I told Betty she should go see it, since it wouldn't be over about 15-20 miles from her school, and she was going to go until she heard there was a MINIMUM 1 HOUR traffic jam in BOTH directions just to get into the airfield... so after a long day teaching and a long afternoon working on playing catch-up with the myriad crap-tasks they constantly dump on teachers, she decided just to go home... The shuttle did several flyovers of Ellington Field and the two main airports in Houston, downtown Houston, the San Jacinto Monument, and of course several flyovers of nearby Johnson Space Center just to the southeast... we could see them repeatedly circling around and flying over from our vantage point at Ellington... It was VERY cool!
Then, they finally returned, did one more low pass over the field, flew their downwind leg and turned in on the approach, and safely touched down... taxied back up right in front of us, turned straight towards us not 100 yards away, and taxied in and parked on the apron, and idled for a few minutes (cooling the turbines I'd suppose) and wafting that sweet smell of burned kerosene across the tarmac, and then shut her down... the military guys and gals out there moved the rope barricades up to within about 40 yards of the aircraft, and we got to see her "close up".... did I mention it was MAJORLY COOL??
So, after taking a ton of pics from various angles, and making our way down to the "NASA employee area" (which had been admitted through the south gate, by permit only, along with the press) we got some pics near the front of the aircraft near where all the TV news teams set up shop with their cameras to cover the landing. They were shooting stock footage for the report when Keira and I went in... she was wearing her "I camped in space" T-shirt from her JSC day camp last fall, and I was wearing my Curiosity MSL T-shirt... they especially liked filming her prancing down the edge of the curb toward the gate... an O-L-D fellow about 6-8 feet from me got interviewed for TV... he was a JSC volunteer and had his badges and volunteer shirt and a boony hat with B-17 emblems and stuff on it... and he was the right age to have flown one! That was a hoot to watch... sharp cookie... he said some political stuff which was absolutely true but which would undoubtedly get me banned, so you'll have to just miss out on his wisdom... too bad...
Anyway, after we got all our pics and soaked it all in a bit, we wandered back to the "display" area some JSC volunteers had set up... Keira got to try on an outer glove from a space suit, got her pic taken with some space food and a shuttle tile, and took her pic in a space-suit photo mockup. They had a HUGE model shuttle standing there with opening payload doors, so I took her pic there as well, along with a beautiful new model at 1/30 scale of the CST-100 commercial crew vehicle on an Atlas V rocket, with a single SRB. The Boeing/NASA folks were really nice manning that tent and were handing out bookmark/luggage tag thingys that Keira wants to put on her zipper pull of her backpack (probably get it stolen, so I hope she decides to do something else like display it). She got a lot of stickers and stuff, we touched a moonrock in a little portable trailer display thing with some cool Orion/SLS and ISS displays inside, and then made our way over to their open tent "sourvenir store"... Keira got her $8 worth of shuttle keyring, small astronaut figure (to launch in her rocket with an appropriate parachute-- he'll have to come back like Yuri Gagarin though-- under his own chute! She also got her a little flag from STS-135 (probably leftovers they were selling for 50 cents each to unload them). I lusted after a shuttle book but can't afford it right now...
Good times... The shuttle is scheduled to depart Ellington Field tomorrow at dawn, en route to refuel at El Paso, (interesting ain't it that they can take off from Florida, do flyovers of the space coast, fly over to Michoud and Stennis and do flyovers there, then zip across Louisiana and do a bunch of flyovers of most of metro Houston, but they have to refuel before they can get from Houston, which is already 100 miles west of the Texas/Louisiana border, out of Texas to New Mexico... darn big state, as anybody who's driven west of Sonora thru Iraan and Fort Stockton and on to El Paso can attest-- San Antonio ain't even half way! Anyway, they're supposed to fuel up there, fly out to White Sands and do some flyovers there, before continuing on to California... don't remember if they're doing flyovers of Andrews or Dryden and then flying into LA or the other way around...
Anyway, she shall not pass this way again... farewell and good luck! When the shuttle lands for the last time in California (at LAX IIRC) that'll be it... none of them will ever return to the sky again... That'll be it... Endeavour will make her last journey by ground transporter about 12 miles to the science museum which will be her final resting place, and 3 days later, Atlantis will make the same journey via ground transporter from the Orbiter Processing Facility at KSC up the road to the KSC Visitor Center's new shuttle pavilion they're building (which I got pics of when I was there a few weeks ago...)
That'll be the end of the shuttles... they'll belong to history, like the Saturn V's, Apollo, Gemini, and Mercury spacecraft before them...
Later! OL JR
An excited Keira and I wait in line in front of NASA building 990 at Ellington Field... we were about the 50th person in line...
A NASA jet arrives with some personnel about the time they let us in the gates...
A mess of Apache attack helicopters lined up on the apron just down the flight line from where we were waiting at Ellington...
First view of the shuttle and the SCA off to the almost due north...
A NASA T-38 Talon lands after playing chase plane with the SCA...
