"The drive across the NASA causeway from Titusville, Fla., to the Kennedy Space Center was nasty business Friday morning, July 8, as an estimated 1 million people from across the U.S. crowded the space coast to watch the final liftoff of the final space shuttle, 30 years after the first one flew. The entire million went home happy. Despite a persistent cloud cover that parked itself directly over Cape Canaveral early in the morning, the shuttle Atlantis lit its engines at 11:29 and 3.9 seconds E.T., after a heart-stopping hold at T-minus-31 seconds, when the data sent back from the retractable arm that holds the "beanie cap" covering the tip of the external tank suggested the arm might be stuck. But the data cleared up, the arm worked fine, the clock resumed, and the ship launched."
via TIME/continue reading
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