🚀 go-pugleaf

>I was wondering if someone at NASA could tell me how long before a
>launch one could take the KSC tour with a shuttle on the pad. My
>mom went to a convention in Miami last year and she said that a
>shuttle was on the launch pad when her KSC tour bus (tram?) went
>by, and she got a real good look at it up close. So what is the
>tour "window" for getting to do this?
>
>Thank you.
>
>--
>Julie Bixby                        Internet: markb@spock.dis.cccd.edu
>Engage Romulan .sig cloaking device....
>

  The shuttle is on the pad alot, but most of the time all you can see
  is the top of the tank sticking out above a mass or girders and beams
  called the Rotating Service Structure on the launch pad. The shuttle
  itself is surrounded by the RSS for weather protection and payload
  installation. Hence, to get a good look at the Shuttle, you have to
  be there when its on its way to the launch pad, the "roll-out" or
  immediately thereafter. I did that once and the bus (a bona-fide bus,
  not a tram) stopped about a half-mile away while the Shuttle was
  near the turn onto Launch Pad 39A. Then we went over to Pad 39B
  (unoccupied) and got out to take pictures... we watched it (Columbia
  on STS-9) climb up the incline a good distance before we left.
  
  Oh, and despite what has been posted here from time to time, the
  SPACEPORT USA tourist attraction DOES NOT provide bus rides to see
  a Shuttle launch. The facility DOES NOT open until something like
  two hours after a launch on the day in question. Since the RSS only
  pulls away from the Shuttle about 12 hours before launch, you can't
  see much but the aforementioned top of the tank even on the day
  before the launch.

  -Brian

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Brian S. Thorn                                    "If ignorance is bliss,
BrianT@cup.portal.com                               this must be heaven."
                                                -Diane Chambers, "Cheers"
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