My sister, Sue, and brother in law, Todd, came down to Orlando for a few days.  Fortunately, they came down when the space shuttle was scheduled to launch. 

The timing was perfect since we had planned to fish in the Indian River near Titusville.

We got as close as we could to the Launch Pad 39 without being accosted or chased away from one of the many NASA helicopters patrolling the area.

The beeping is my watch going off that was marking the launch time,

The light was very intense and a few seconds after it was in the air the it was quite loud.

The wind was blowing about 15 knots from the west and so we were sitting in about 3 foot swell. This is the reason it was hard to hold the camera still.

The only thing that could be better than this would be the next night launch scheduled for March 11 at 2:31 in the morning.