Today's Discovery Launch

I  will start this by saying I had this complete & so lovely & AOL just trashed it with code & now I am having to start over again. I hope I can recreate it like I had it! What is with AOL?! I just added one link (the song) & click save and my AOL radio browns out & then about 6 lines of code! Ugh!

#1: Discovery Crew: Commander Eileen Collins  (front right), behind her in white is Soichi Noguchi, next to him is Charles "Charlie" Camarda, next to him Wendy Lawrence,  behind her Andrew "Andy" Thomas (from "Down Under"), next to him in white, Steve Robinson & in front of him in orange James Kelly.

#2: Challenger Crew: Front from Left: Michael Smith, Commander Dick Scobee, Ronald McNair, Back from Left: Ellison Onizuka,Christa McAuliffe, Greg Jarvis, & Judy Resnik.

#3: Columbia Crew: Front from Left: Commander Rick Husband, Kalpana Chawla, Willie McCool; Back from left: Dave Brown, Laurel Clark, Michael Anderson, & Ilan Ramon.

Listen to: "Way Up There!"

If you are not familiar with the Discovery Crew take a look!

Check out Return To Flight Also!

I hope everyone will be watching & praying for today's launch of Discovery & until they are safely home! After the window panel caused so much damage I'm not too confident. I am just imagining a bird hitting it! I am thrilled there is a female commander on this mission. Eileen Collins is pretty awesome from what I have seen. I had watched about an hour on tv of the crew explaining their backgrounds and responsiblities on the mission a few months back. I couldn't find it on the web to link it.

How do you sleep the night before a launch? I can imagine it is a mix of excitementand anxiety. Heck, I have trouble sleeping some nights with just my life & it is nothing in comparison to a launch into space. I'll have to remember that in the future! Ha!

I still remember the day the Challenger exploded. I was in my Jr. year of college. I had a statistic class & then went to meet my friend Colleen for lunch at the student union. When I got there everyone was gathered around the wide screen tvs. I then saw what they were looking at. I remember they kept delaying the launch but I really didn't think much of it. Ever since I could remember I never worried about space travel. The explosion was very difficult to watch. For the past 15 years I have taught psychology I have always made sure my students learn about the Challenger & the reason it happened - GroupThink. 

When the Columbia explosion occurred, all I kept praying it would not turn out to be for the same reason Challenger exploded. I prayed they had learned from the Challenger tragedy. Many of my students were only a few years old when Challenger exploded so this was a different feeling for them than for those of us which felt it for the 2nd time. Now I have 2 to go through in my future classes. On the show I mentioned watching, Commander Collins was very serious about making sure everyone voiced their concerns. I was quite happy it seemed like she was doing everything she could to avoid GroupThink.

Launch is 3:51PM EDT!

I hope you will pray & watch the launch. I know they have work so hard to get where they are today. The crew seems like they are so much fun & would be great to come back & excite young kids to be future astronauts

I'm tempting the fates here I know adding after what happened before but...

I just read this & it is "quite interesting!" Read about the picture a girl slipped into Laurel Clark's purse the night before the launch & then about her husband trying to get things of his wife returned to him! Man!

Update: Scrubbed! Hmmm! I'm not feeling to good about this whole thing! Is it the fuel sensor or what it is "sensing?" Makes one really wonder!

Check this article on today's scrub of the launch...

This is GroupThink:

"Since the Columbia tagedy, NASA has worked to fix its ''safety culture,'' which the accident investigators concluded broke down during the flight. The space agency said it has had frank and vigorous discussions about the upcoming flight - including the fuel gauge problem - and encouraged engineers to speak up."

And the cost for today's scrub?

"The launch scrub cost NASA an estimated $616,000 in fuel and labor costs."

Lets hope they do not have too many scrubs...as that is our tax dollars!