[X] My Assistant

[climber]

A few days before Phoenix launch, as I knew I was going to be away from the internet, I tried to find out the phone n° @ Nasa I used to call to follow launches on the phone. I've got some reactions here about the interest of listening only without actualy watching and I guess this deserves its own topic.
If the moments of lift off up to probe release are exiting, what I realy love myself is "before" and "after". I mean, I don't take pleasure only during 9.8 seconds watching a 100m race. I realy love to know what is gona happen, I listen to the differents coms, go's, status assesments by Official speaker, and so on... In my mind, listening i.e. imagining what is going on give me a stonger feeling than images themselves. I guess that, if I was to watch a launch from the Cape, I'll be very frustated not having real time informations.

Landing is something a bit different since...there's NO images at all. By Apollo's flights my English was not good enough to understand in the text what was going on. By MPF, I had to rely on a dial com which I had to reboot after each information was coming down (very good feeling up to now thou ). By Spirit landing I was in Pasadena with the TPS sharing not only JPL's coms and images but also sharing with 2000 people in the same room. Another
I'm sure each of us here has some feeling and/or souvenirs to share on this topic...

[djellison]

Spirit Landing...I felt physically ill.