Extreme Space Shuttle Sighting

July 28, 2008

Robert Pearlman over at CollectSPACE.com has a great post up today of extreme ways people have watched a space shuttle launch.

There are two videos:

1) The first was taken from an Air Canada flight by someone who likes to say "cool" and "holy $#@%" quite a bit. If I was filming from his vantage, though, I think I'd drop the s-bomb as well -- you can see the shuttle launch from the ground and ascend far beyond the altitude of the the plane. (Normal low-Earth orbit for the shuttle is about 210 miles...)

Based on the time of day and post date, it's either space shuttle Endeavour or Discovery during a launch from last year.

2) The second video is of space shuttle Atlantis's launch (STS-117) during a skydive. Ridiculous and amazing, and oddly filmed better than our friends from within the plane.

Kinda reminds me of what I'll be doing in a few days to catch a total solar eclipse... I'm super-excited about this, obviously.

P.S. If you can't see the embedded YouTube videos from Robert's site (I had a bit of trouble), here are some direct links for you:
Airplane video, Skydiving video

Photo caption: A little too extreme to be real.
Credit: loomingma/webshots.com