My 5 year old is obsessed with the Space Shuttles, rockets and all things Space.

I've been showing him YouTube videos of Shuttle launches and it got me thinking, who here has seen a launch? From watching the videos I can only imagine how it gorgeous it sounds.

I have never seen a launch in person but if your son wants to know everything about them then I can't recommend this set of books enough. It's not cheap but it is worth every penny. It might be few years before he can process the content given his age.

I’ve seen 5. Awesome stuff. It’s not just the sight; the sound. The sound.

I've read the ground shakes. Seeing 5, that's seriously lucky!

Good friend of mine lives in Daytona Beach in a high rise condo that faces the launch center. He gets watch it all. Lucky guy.

For 1981 and late 1990 (I moved to Daytona Beach in early 1991) there were 38 Shuttle launches (I had to look that up). I saw most of them from on or near the beach in Indialantic, Florida. I really don't have a clue how many but, MANY.

I saw one from the water near MILA in the mid eighties. We snuck in close in a small inflatable the night/early morning before....within a few miles. It was deafening and everything shook, even the water it felt like.

Saw Challenger explode while riding down A1A on my way to work.

I don't even count the ones I saw from Daytona, just contrails, no sound.

The Saturn 5's were cooler....especially the night launch.

I would have loved to see Apollo 17 launch in 1972. The most awesome machine ever built, lighting up the night sky like a man-made star.

I was born in Melbourne and live in West Melbourne most of my life. We're about 50 miles south so we've seen a ton of launches. I've only watched them from our front yard. That's how its always been too. One of the things that was "normal" around here for us is to step outside at launch and usually you'd see all your neighbors out watching too. From our position if the weather was clear it was always a pretty sight. During day launches you'd see the plume hang around for a long time and obviously at night it lit up the sky even from 50 miles away. Day or night I could always follow the shuttle and actually see the SRBs fall off and I could trail them awhile until they burned out.(They were easier to see at night though) From our position the shuttle would usually appear North above the trees then arc out over the ocean towards what looked like East to South. I was not in the State when the Challenger accident happened but I have family and friends who saw it. I have seen more than one failed rocket launches though. One rocket(I don't remember what), it was evening I believe and I saw it blow up. From my position it looked like it just turned into sparkles. On the way to work one afternoon, directly North ahead of me in the sky was a colossal "cloud". It looked like multiple thunderheads all rolled into one. I couldn't prove it but I knew I was looking at something exploded and not an unusual cloud formation, no way. Later I had heard that tons of people had been calling in to emergency services and the news about it and sure enough KSC had themselves a massive rocket failure. Again I don't know which rocket it was. I remember seeing some footage on some sort of documentary and it shows a rocket explosion at the cape and it came down on top of them. It may have been that one.

My Dad has told me of the Saturn Vs and how huge and slow they were. That must have been quite impressive seeing one of those hanging and plugging along through the sky. I have heard the Orbiter's sonic booms a few times. Probably the best and startling was one night I was up late and couldn't really sleep. This was probably about 3 a.m. I was out in our back yard looking up at a clear sky and just sitting on the edge of the pool when out of nowhere I hear that sonic bang. There was no warning, no lead up, I didn't know that an Orbiter was up there and then bang lol. I remember watching John Glenn's return to flight launch from school. My mother happened to be I think on the highway traveling when she saw the Orbiter being piggy backed by the 747 transport which must have been a sight.

Probably my best Shuttle launch memory would be the final flight. I was at work on launch day but I wanted to make a point to see it one way or another since it was the last. Screeching almost directly over our shop was a low flying F-16. This was not normal and it was coming from the South. I have a feeling it was on its way to provide CAP or whatever they call it for protecting the launch's airspace. You usually don't see fighters like this stationed at Patrick plus he was coming from the wrong direction so perhaps he was sent from Homestead? Anyways a little while later the shuttle launched so I stepped out to watch it. Some time later, when the Orbiter was scheduled to come home, I also wanted to make sure that I try to see that. So I set my alarm and got up at 5 a.m. or so(don't remember exactly other than it was early). I turned on the news to track it and waited for a little while. Then the news showed the radar of where supposedly the Orbiter was.(This will show how quickly these things unfold) On the radar it showed the Orbiter was still over the Gulf of Mexico waters getting ready to go feet dry somewhere near Naples I think. I didn't want to miss anything so I ran outside. Up until this point, even though I've seen many launches I've never actually seen the Orbiter come in except for on tv because it all happens too fast and its hard to know where exactly to look. Though I was looking for it I was mostly expecting to miss it because of not knowing really where to look and when. Thankfully it was still dark out otherwise I probably would not have seen it. But low and behold I hear the loud boom(usually there's a double boom) and before long from about the South, I see a very fast moving bright light. It was as bright as a star and moving with tremendous speed and fluidity South to North. It eventually moved out of my field of view so I ran back inside to then see the Cape cameras filming the Orbiter coming in for a dark landing on the KSC runway. I'm glad that I was able to see the very last Shuttle launch from start to finish like that. I miss those launches. I absolutely adored those new hull mounted cameras they started to put on them so that you could watch the launch outside, then for the first time go inside and watch those otherworldly views of the Shuttle leaving the earth.

I was here for Columbia. I was working for my neighbor at the time and we were at a job. I just remember the customer coming into where we were working and saying "They lost another one". Very sad. I was also very fortunate to be able to visit one of the Orbiter Processing Facilities. Really amazing. We saw Atlantis and she was covered in this unbelievable web of specialized scaffolding and work platforms and over across the way on another area of the floor was laying parts of the rudder. We got to walk under the Orbiter with the black tiles only an arm lengths away.

I was watching a Falcon 9 launch the other day, the camera was at least a mile away from the launch. About 5 seconds after the rocket ignited the sound reached the camera and it started to shake quite a bit. And that is from a rocket with a meer fraction of the thrust of a Saturn V or even the Shuttle.


In the mid 90's we were visiting my aunt and uncle in St Petersburg FL, there was a Shuttle launch schedule for the week we were going to be visiting so the day of we drove over to the cape. The launch was scheduled for 1:00, we stopped for lunch around Orlando and were back on the "Bee Line Express" by noon headed east when there appeared a vertical contrail in front of us, they had launched an hour early to beat some weather coming in. That's the closest I ever got to a launch.

The most impressive sound I ever heard was the four Olympus engines on a Vulcan bomber when scrambling. You could feel it in your chest, and your voice quavered.

i've seen a few shuttle launches, including one launch while i was in an airplane at 37,000 feet. we were traveling north from florida to atlanta and we watched the thing zoom up past us in a hurry. only took a few seconds for it to reach our altitude, less than a minute i guess, and it just kept going and going.

it was interesting to see how the trajectory flattened out quite a bit once it got not much higher than we were. i think they are nearly horizontal before reaching 175km, but when you're 10km up already and in the clean air, everything up there with you looks closer than it really is.

As mentioned... the sound. It seems to reverbrate not just the ground, but your body also.
And you are suddenly aware of the birds flying to cover
One thing that is hard to appreciate on TV or media is the increase rate of acceleration.
The missile seems to start slow then it accelerates and the rate of acceleration increases.

The one and only launch I saw was STS-121 on 4 July 2006. Best. Fireworks. Show. EVER. As others have mentioned, it's one thing to watch it on TV. It was a whole other experience in RL. When the sound waves reach you, you feel it right into the deepest core of your body. It was amazing. That thing hauls too, as Fittop said. The other thing that surprised me, which hasn't been mentioned yet, is how bright the light coming from the SRBs is. It's almost enough to hurt your eyes.

Wish I could have seen a Saturn V go up. Being born in 82, it was a bit before my time. I saw the shuttle launch with a really good friend of mine, and we had dinner at a Cracker Barrel later that night. We got to talking with an old timer about his experiences watching the Saturn Vs launch. From his stories, it was truly a sight to behold.

Definitely one of the first things I'd do if I got hold of a time machine is to go back and watch a Saturn V launch. Just imagine 300-odd feet of rocket weighing 3000 TONS accelerating from a standstill to Mach 1, STRAIGHT UP in about a minute. It boggles the mind.

Came close in 1983 to seeing Shuttle Columbia launch. Was in Fl on my honeymoon in Sept. Shuttle was scheduled to launch the end of Sept but got postponed. We did get to see it on the launch pad though. We took a bus tour and were able to get extremely close to the launch pad.
The bus drove all the way around the launch pad so we were able to see every angle. We only had a limited time before the access arm moved in place and covered the shuttle.

Here is one I took.