Call me Ben :-) Here we go. If you are coming Jan 17, print this out.

The Port is the closest place you can go and still see the pad (for the public); you can get closer by going to the KSC VC, but you will only see it once it has launched and risen above the trees and structures there.

The Visitors Center is approx. six miles from the pad. Port Canaveral is 12.

You can also go to Titusville, but that is 14. From the Port, it will arc from left to right beautifully, whereas in Titusville it will be heading away from you. From the VC it will be somewhat left to right but not as wide.

To sum it up, the best place is the Port. If the sound matters more to you than a nice look and a clean visual, then by all means head to the VC. Stay in the parkling lot and you won't even have to pay!

The best place would normally be Playalinda Beach, at just five miles from pad 41. They were open for every Atlas 5 until MRO, so presumably NASA (who controls the refuge) closes it for their spacecraft; and given the RTG I am quite sure it will be again.

Directions to Port Canaveral:

You will need to get to the Beeline (now called the Beachline), Route 528, from wherever you are staying or driving from. Once on 528, regardless of which way you are coming from, you take the exit that is labeled with the giant *Blue* sign (that's what stands out more than anything!) marked "Terminal A/North Cargo Pier" and which heads off to CCAFS Gate 1.

When you exit it curves around and over the drawbridge. About 1/4 mile later, the road curves sharply to the right and at the same time it goes under an overpass. It is at and just past this curve that the best viewing is located. Pull your car over to the left (water) side of the road under the telephone poles.

Come early, at least two-three hours before, because it fills up for every launch and even more so for this one I'm sure. (Delta 4 Heavy was the most crowded I've ever seen it, both sides of the road were filled up with cars parking).

Do not go all the way to the gate and watch there. For one thing the view is blocked by land, and for another the security folks will chase you away.

The view will be like this:

http://spaceflightnow.com/atlas/av004/launchgallery/06.html

How loud it will be from 12 miles depends mainly on the wind direction, but it will not be more than a moderately loud rumble at best. If you went to the VC, then it will be loud enough to crackle and rattle your bones to a good degree as long as there are not strong winds as well.

By the way, despite the RTG the safety lines remain the same so far. Press site 39 is the closest at 4 miles due west of the pad; the ASOC is about 4.5 miles away and due South of the pad. They both have nice views. The press usually has the option of travelling over to the South of the pad where there is a view that is across the water rather than the partial tree obscuration from the PS.

Enjoy. I hope that helps those of you coming. Feel free to ask any questions.

You are not allowed to stop along the highway over the Banana River, but it would be beautiful. If you could stop there, it is better than Titusville itself for the Shuttle.

Titusville is a nice place to watch too, it's also across pure water and provides a different perspectvice. But you'll be a drop further and the pad is partially below the horizon.

FWIW, I will be on console in the ASOC during the count and boost.

http://mediaarchive.ksc.nasa.gov/detail.cfm?mediaid=27614

If I am lucky I will be able to emerge to the roof for a minute or so to see our
puppy heading out.

-Alan

Woodstock 1969 was far, far nicer than Woodstock 1999.

http://members.aol.com/Mary1NYS/Top10.html

SIGH...nothing I'd love to do more, believe me, but I have to spend that whole week out of town elsewhere doing marathon meetings & other unpleasant work stuff...sure miss being just an avionics guy sometimes!!!!

MEANWHILE.... The pathetic schedule poster at the NASA TV web site STILL don't have any pre-launch briefing or launch coverage listed for New Horizons.... but they're listing a Feb spacestation spacewalk. I think they're trying to compete with ESA public information for utter lameness.

2006 january

January 5, Thursday
3 p.m. - 7 p.m. - Live News Interviews on Mars Exploration Rovers 2nd Anniversary - JPL (One-Way Media Interviews)

January 6, Friday
3 p.m. - 7 p.m. - Live News Interviews on Topex/Poseidon - JPL (One-Way Media Interviews)

January 7, Saturday
10 a.m. - 12 p.m. - FIRST Robotics 2006 Kick Off - Manchester, New Hampshire - GSFC (Kick Off Event)

January 10, Tuesday
TBD - ISS Expedition 12 In-flight JAXA Educational Event with Hiroshima Kokutaiji High School, Hiroshima, Japan - JSC (Education Event)

January 12, Thursday
3 p.m. - ISS Expedition 13 / Marcos Pontes Crew News Conference - JSC (Interactive Media Briefing)

January 19, Thursday
TBD - ISS Expedition 12 In-flight Educational Event with Kuss Middle School, Fall River, MA - JSC (Education Event)

January 25, Wednesday
2 p.m. - ISS Mission Status Briefing - JSC (Interactive News Conference)

February

February 2, Thursday
TBD - ISS Expedition 12 EVA Coverage (EVA begins at TBD) - JSC (Mission Coverage)

Ben:

Can you *walk* along any of the highway bridges across the Banana River, on a proper pedestrian area? I'm not going to go to the NH launch, sadly (though I'd have surely found a way to bring my own mud, if not the other stuff!) but really want to see the final Shuttle launch...

Bob Shaw

Now, now, be patient. They're just not committing to a timetable yet, that's their way of telling the press not to buy nonrefundable plane tickets. Once the schedule is fixed I think that we can rely on there being the usual set of pre-launch, launch, and post-launch briefings...though I am sure that all of us who will be glued to our seats watching the NASA TV feed and staring at the cloud trail that is all that will remain of NH on Earth will ultimately be frustrated by the usual switch back to ISS mission coverage. I always take that view of the ISS control room to mean that NASA is telling me to get to work and write about the launch already!

For those of you who can't make it to the launch there will also be a TPS person covering it....sadly, it won't be me.

--Emily

No, not what you are thinking of.... there is only one Indian River bridge leading to KSC and that is the one mentioned above; it starts at the Astronaut Hall of Fame and goes to the Visitors Complex. This you cannot stop your car on or walk to.

By the way, we are confusing rivers. The Indian River is what flows on front of Titusville. The Banana River is between the launch pads and, for example, the VAB, Merrit Island and the Visitors Center.

Further north in Titusville is the 406 bridge which leads into the wildlife refuge; that is a nice place to watch shuttle (and Atlas 5 at 14 miles), but the 'bridge' is just a small drawbridge on the Titusville side and does not get any closer to the pads than Titusville itself. (Kind of confusing, I know).

The viewing area by the Port I gave directions to is 'on' the Banana River.

If you are coming for the Shuttle, get a causeway pass (and the causeway is over the Banana River). That takes you to the closest public viewing site at 6 or 7 miles vs. which pad it's launching from. If you can get a VIP or Press access, that's closer (in fact the closest anyone gets) at 3-4 miles depending.

Thanks Ben for the detailed info. I am keeping open the option of seeing the launch depending on how the scheduled launch date firms up after the Atlas V inspection.

INSTRUMENT TO SEARCH FOR DUST CLUMPS ON WAY TO PLUTO
----------------------------------------------------

As the first student-built instrument ever selected to fly on a planetary
mission, the University of Colorado at Boulder's Student Dust Counter will
monitor the density of dust grains in space as NASA's New Horizons buzzes
to Pluto and beyond. Launch is set for mid-January.

http://spaceflightnow.com/atlas/av010/051231dust.html

Somehow I get the impression this author doesn't like New Horizons. Or any space exploration..... :

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=48172

The kind of anger which that article causes to rise up inside me cannot be described in words.

What a loon! I couldn't get funded for NH2 and this guy is worried about
funding 500,000 New Horizons missions?

...more proof that trolls are not restricted to the Internet

OMFG!!!
And check this out:

This guy ought to be executed, not nominated...

And he has a daily radio talk show. Like that involves any actual intellectual requirements.

I bet he, like most others, didn't make a peep when CBS paid HALF A BILLION DOLLARS to the NFL for the right to show football on their network in the 1990s. And don't get me started on what jocks and actors get paid for what amounts to mere entertainment.

And in 2001, the US Department of Defense could not seem to account for a paltry 2.6 *TRILLION* DOLLARS! Where was the outrage for this extreme waste?!

http://www.dod.gov/speeches/2001/s20010716-secdef2.html

If you have to keep wondering why I think we all need to help educate the public on the wonders and necessity of space science, this guy spouting ignorance over the airwaves to the unwashed masses says it all.

wow...

Well, look on the bright side:
1. he appears to be contemplating funding the space program to the tune of 325 trillion dollars
2. he didn't mention plutonium.

I'm amazed that this guy's ancestors ever left Olduvai Gorge!

I suspect they didn't - that might have involved, er, the 'E' word.

Bob Shaw

Kinsolving is notorious as the official Crazy Guy at White House press conferences, at least since that gay escort who was being paid by the GOP to pose as a reporter was uncovered.

Considering his obvious anti-space stance, I am surprised the Bush Administration allows him in there.

It sounds more like he is worried that the President and Congress will make you king, Alan, and that your sole desire would be to send a duplicate New Horizons to every single KBO. Of course, he neglects how much more cost efficient you would be in building New Horizons (what's the Roman numeral for half a million?).

Demagogues, rabble rousers, and nut cases. It's the closest thing we have to perpetual motion. They never stop.

When we do develop nanotechnology to the point that nanoprobes can be sent to explore outer space, sending probes to every KBO won't be a crazy idea and will likely cost far less than he and others fear.

http://www.iase.cc/

http://www.stec2005.space.aau.dk/getpdf.php?id=47

Emily Lakdawalla's Blog about the Atlas V passing its boroscope test was deleted from the Planetary Society website. I wonder why...

Hmmmm....according to Wikipedia, it would be a D with a line over it, or |V| with a line over it. Either are better than 500 Ms all together

Alan Stern what's up with that boroscope test? Is it in progress ?
What are the results? Is Atlas-5 ready to fly?

Even in its milder forms, that sort of contempt or disregard for space exploration is all too prevalant. Helped out by a nice dose of ignorance, of course.

We had some dinner guests over a few months ago and, while I was enthusing about NH, one of them acutally said, "What's the point of all of this? I thought we've already been to the *MOON*!"

After some patient explanation of the different bodies in our solar system and a little introduction to the science that NH could give us, attitudes shifted. But they really kicked back over into the pro-space camp when I registered their names in the New Horizons database and printed out nice little certificates. Somehow that "Your name is going into space" thing really does get to people, even non-space-freaks, way more than I would have expected.

But it was that "We've already been to the Moon" comment that will stay with me for a long time... They don't have an eye-rolling emoticon on this board, do they?

It might be worthwhile to try to dig out what people like your guest actually think "space" is, and what is in it, before you clue them in with additional details. I'm curious as to what their personal cosmology is like.

My best guess is that it consists of: (1) the Earth, which you've been told is ball shaped, though you find it really hard to believe (I would guess that this sort of person never learned how to read a map or a globe, either); (2) Space, which is "out there" (somewhere) and is filled with little twinkly lights, all more or less at the same distance and not substantially different from each other.

The Moon is bigger than all of those twinkly lights, and therefore more important, and so if you've been to the Moon, what else could compare?

As punkboi alluded to in few posts back in this thread, there was a brief appearance of information that sounded positive. That appeared to be an inadvertant leak as the test results have not been publicly released thru official channels. Generally, the folks in charge want all the facts sorted and reviewed before going public. The announcement will probably come soon on the NH website or thru the NASA PAO.

Not to sound like some juvenile who posts on another message board, but did you call your guest a dumba--? You should've.

It's a constant battle to build awareness of space in people, and we should all take a breath and remember to be patient.

My own wife--a very intelligent woman-- was still trying to get the difference between stars, planets, and galaxies straight in her mind for years after we'd met. The biggest obstacle for most people (which undoubtedly holds true for most aspects of communication, I suspect) is a lack of genuine interest in the subject. Over the past few years, the MER and Cassini websites have proven to be invaluable tools for stimulating my wife's interest, and now she's become a solid supporter of space exploration after once thinking it a waste of time and money.

Let's face it: Pretty much everyone on UMSF has had a life-long interest in space, and most of us could probably name the planets in order from the Sun before they knew the names of all fifty states. We're enthusiasts, we're buffs, this is our thing. The key to promoting this interest, which we know in our hearts is overwhelmingly important on a variety of levels for everyone, is finding some way to transmit all the wonder and excitement we feel to those closest to us...and let it spread...

Pretty much right. I was asked to remove it for that reason. Sorry for the false alarm (false celebration?)

--Emily

So it was it "false," not just prematurely released?

No, that's not what I meant to say. Please, be patient and wait for the official news from NASA!

--Emily

Standing by!

Emily, not to pry or to get you into trouble, but are there any other good or bad things happening with NH that you may be privy to? A simple yes or no with the appropriate smiley would suffice... ...thanks!

I'm not really privy to any mission stuff, and even if I was, I'd either share it widely or pretend I knew nothing . I can, however, give a nudge and a wink and say that there are not one but two announcements that the Society is going to be making very soon for public fun with Pluto and New Horizons...watch our website! And get those Venus Express art contest entries in!

--Emily

Oh, I know what you meant, Emily. Sorry, I'm just giving you a hard time Anyone who has connections to New Horizons knows about the test results; however, as has been pointed out, nothing is final until NASA HQ "officially" accepts the results and releases its decision to the public.

Here's one of those announcements I mentioned. I hope people here at UMSF have fun with this one. It's only open for a week, so enter early -- and often!

Pluto Top Ten

--Emily

Personally, I have no objection to their taking their time in checking out the fuel tanks. Given my personal stake in this thing (along with the fact that I'll be physically nearby), I have no particular desire to have it blow up and strew plutonium confetti all over eastern Florida.

...good contest, Emily; looking forward to seeing the results! Thanks for taking my wheedling with a grain of salt as well! ( back atcha! )

There were two things I was looking forward to this month: USC winning the Rose Bowl and New Horizons' launch. Since the Rose Bowl thing didn't go as expected, I have bad premonitions for NH. Just kidding!

I'm superstitious...but not in the I'll-freak-out-if-I-walk-under-a-ladder or break-a-mirror sense.

I'm continuing to wonder if there may be a one gram cylinder prepared by the Space Services, Incorporated, (including Celestis, Inc. merged with Space Services Inc. of America) onboard New Horizons.

Hey, Emily, is it me or is it that your contest isn't as impartial as you say?

um, i think if found a typo on the link for neil degrasse typson. 2.67 billion miles and all I get is a 404 not found? there be an extra "p" in the link methinks.

ps. though i be snarky, i do enjoy the site redesign. AND i am now getting the podcast through itunes! rock on!

Yikes. Fixed. Thanks for pointing that out.

--Emily

I've submitted a reason why it IS

I've got to think of one why it isnt now.

Ahh - problem....when I click on the 'isnt' radio button, it doesnt actually select

(Win XP Pro SP2, Firefox 1.5)



Doug

What do they do with this Rose Bowl and how can I win one. We have a rose vase, is that the same thing?

You're not the first one to have had this problem; I've forwarded the comment on to someone at TPS who may know a little more. The forms are black magic to me, I don't know how they work. If anybody here knows more about form coding and can tell me what I did wrong please have at it. In any case I'll be looking closely at the reasons and make sure they are properly identified before they get judged.

--Emily

That's the reason I posted my comment on the impartial stuff above, I couldn't select the reason why it's not a planet and assumed it was a joke on your side

I think the problem might be in the following part of the HTML code:

Both choices are called and id-ed "radiobutton". I wouldn't be surprised if all the entries you get turn out to be reasons why Pluto IS a planet due to this.
When I changed to a different browser, it worked, but it still might be a bug in the page.