Space Shuttle Discovery STS-128 launch (Update: it was a real winner.)

Space Shuttle Discovery's STS-128 mission is set to lift off within minutes of the time of this blog post. My suggestion: space out to Soma FM's Mission Control channel in one browser tab (or on iTunes or your player of choice) while you watch Miles O'Brien hosting live coverage of the launch on SpaceFlightNow.com, embedded after the jump. Follow Miles on Twitter here, and SpaceFlightNow here. I'll also be following @Astro_Jose = Mexican-American astronaut José Hernández, who tweets from space en Español (!!!).

Image (via NASA): "Seated are Commander Rick Sturckow (right) and Pilot Kevin Ford. From the left (standing) are mission specialists José Hernández, John "Danny" Olivas, Nicole Stott, European Space Agency's Christer Fuglesang and Patrick Forrester." Godspeed, all.

Previously:

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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Rindan

Watching a shuttle take off is one of those things that if you ever get the chance to do, you should. There is nothing that can prepare you for it. I watched the shuttle take off by accident a few years ago. I was in Florida and all of a sudden the traffic pulled over and people stopped. I looked up, and the shuttle was taking off on the horizon.

Even at the distance I was from the launch, it was fucking nock-your-socks-off breath taking. TV really doesnâ€™t do it justice. Your puny human mind canâ€™t wrap around how absurdly big the shuttle is and the fact that it is flying straight up despite being the size of a building. You could even see people getting choked up a little (I among them). When you are watching the shuttle take off you canâ€™t help but behold it and think â€œWow. Humans kick assâ€.

Yeah, the shuttle program might be absurdly bloated, the shuttle itself might be an expensive piece of shit, and NASA might have developed a schizophrenic relationship with safety, but that doesn’t change the fact that a fucking building sized spaceship is going straight up in the air on a plume of fire to go hang out in an environment so hostile that only humans and a few hibernating bacteria can go there and live. Like I said, it is awesome to the point of almost being religious.
Francesco Fondi

it’s not like being there, but I suggest to follow NASA:

http://twitter.com/NASA

and watching the first series of “Defying Gravity”: a small masterpiece of SCI-FI TV!

http://bit.ly/lHQOv
Takuan

http://www.yopeace.org/files/Mear%20Dalai%20Lama%20close%20up.jpg
Lotusmonger

Orange suits aside, that is one good looking flight crew. Are you sure they aren’t going to detonate a nuke on an incoming comet?
KurtMac

I had tickets for the KSC Causeway for the launch in Feb. but it got pushed back to March so I missed it.

As luck would have it, this time I was on vacation in Florida but on the opposite side of the state! I viewed it from the 6th floor balcony of our hotel on St. Pete Beach. It was breathtaking, I had no idea the view would be so nice to view from such distance!

I’m from Illinois, so this is the first time I saw a launch with my own eyes. Its tough for non-Floridians to see a launch, given the unpredictable variables that can alter launch schedules by days… weeks… months. But after this I’m going to NEED to try again and again to get tickets to see a launch from up close before they retire the fleet!
Tagishsimon

Good suggestion, although the sound is about 6 seconds out of synch with the video, which is bound to be a bit more strange in about 8 minutes…
Anonymous

for next time..

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/spacevidcast

http://www.youtube.com/user/spacevidcast

sarchi
Anonymous

Thanks Xeni! That was fun!
Antinous / Moderator

Five decades in the space business and NASA still hasn’t figured out that nobody looks good in orange.
fataltourist

I love space shuttle.
bugmaker

Great launch! Thanks for the timely tip! Sound was perfect, too.
Takuan

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/153/403714437_ad830e8e49.jpg?v=0
Anonymous

A textbook launch. Here’s to wishing for the rest of the mission to go as well. What a rush.
Takuan

http://johnbatchelorshow.com/imAGES/things-to-come.jpg
Tagishsimon

Yup, that was good.
Argyle

Thanks Xeni. I cry everytime I see one of those. Good timing!
arkizzle / Moderator

Nice! And Ireland, keeping the uplink hot too!

See, we helped the mission :)
Anonymous

Five decades in the space business and NASA still hasn’t figured out that nobody looks good in orange.

I’d assume they’re not supposed to look good in orange, they’re supposed to look highly visible e.g. bobbling in the water after some sort of horrible disaster over the middle of the Atlantic.
Simon Bradshaw

Just saw Discovery and the separated External Tank pass though the pre-dawn sky over London – two bright stars, one white and the other a very clear orange, about twice the width of the Moon apart.

(To match orbits with the Space Station, the Shuttle launches on a trajectory that takes it over the southern UK about twenty minutes after lift-off. If it’s early dawn or late dusk here at the time, it’s possible to see the Orbiter and ET as they pass overhead.)
TEKNA2007

Five decades in the space business and NASA still hasn’t figured out that nobody looks good in orange.

And yet, our astronauts choose to suffer through it and soldier on. Now that’s dedication. :)
arkizzle / Moderator

Oh anonymous! Have you no sense of flair?

So maybe they’de be harder to see, but you know how great they’d look, stepping into the dock in deep blue, Crimpleneâ„¢ leisure suits, with gold lamÃ© trim, complete in matching gloves and slippers.

Yee-ooozzaah!
- http://www.xeni.net Xeni Jardin
  
  I hear Gaultier is designing the next mission’s spacesuits.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    I hear Gaultier is designing the next mission’s spacesuits.
    
    Oh, dear. Horizontal stripes.
TEKNA2007

Argyle#8: I cry everytime I see one of those.

Good to know I’m not the only one. It kinda gets you right there.
Anonymous

I hear Gaultier is designing the next mission’s spacesuits.

Skirts.
Stefan Jones

Be sure to post the inevitable Lou Dobbs rant about Spanish Space Tweets.
* * *

One of the selling points of “Space: 1999″ was that the moon base costumes were created by some high-priced designer.
infinity

TEKNA2007 and ARGYLE. yeah, me too. it totally does.

fwiw, a number of us from work meetup at the international space museum to watch the launch in second life at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Spaceport%20Alpha/48/78/24/ . if you have an computer with a reasonable graphics card, join us for the next one!

there’s also a group at the NASA CoLab / Neil Armstrong Library next door that does the same thing; usually with conversation and storytelling afterwards. i _almost_ got to tell my “and i looked out the hotel window and realized it was the shuttle” story.
planettom

Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill (C.O.L.B.E.R.T.) en route to ISS. “I’m so proud my treadmill will be going into space to help trim down those famously fat astronauts. Lay off the Tang, Chubby!” -Stephen Colbert
Anonymous

i watched the launch at http://www.spacevidcast.com in HD quality. Who want to watch the standard quality can stay with spaceflightnow, but who wants awsome HD quality should come over to spacevidcast.com
TEKNA2007

The lamÃ© totally works for me, but I’m going to vote for head-to-toe. Think Rocky Horror climbing out of his tank,

http://i152.photobucket.com/albums/s163/Renny1825/TheRockyHorrorPictureShow.jpg

except with winged heels and diagonal-cut gloves up to the elbow, and with all-over coverage for that whole annoying space-is-a-vaccuum thing (how rude).
Anonymous

I watched the launch on SpaceVidcast.

Good luck, Discovery, I love space travel!
3hecatl

As a Mexican it’s great to see someone like JosÃ© HernÃ¡ndez doing such an incredible thing as this, even if his family had to go to the US to give him the opportunity.

It also helps that he’s the spitting image of a typical Mexican, seriously, he couldn’t look any more Mexican if he tried. Also good to see a moreno “Mexican” rising higher than the usual gÃ¼eros.
(I’m a gÃ¼ero, btw)
mdh

colbert ftw!
imipak

I managed to get up at 4:50am (UK summer time) and also remembered to wander outside, look up into the southern sky and also see the orbiter and external tank sailing majest here in the UK,ically across the sky – it goes over about 18-20 minutes after lift off, when flying to the ISS.

There are only six more chances to see a Shuttle launch until the fleet is decommissioned and parked in various national museums. Get your kids, remind your neighbours. After that there are five years, at a minimum, before NASA next launch humans. (The ISS crew rotations will be via the Russian Soyuz.)

And finally, I FAR prefer the NASATV HD stream to amateur talking heads getting in the way of the action:

http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?id=1368163