September 4, 2008—NASA played a waiting game with Tropical Storm Hanna, no doubt with thoughts of last February in mind. Atlantis was on the launch pad back in early 2007 with an astronaut crew waiting to deliver solar panels to the International Space Station. Then, the hail hit.

Engineers today rolled Atlantis out on NASA’s huge Apollo era tractor called the Crawler Transporter. The eleven million pound spacecraft and its launch platform the size of a baseball diamond are hoisted on hydraulic jacks and perched on the transporter for the six hour journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch pad. Hanna delayed things by two days, but first motion occurred today (9/4) at 10 am.

NASA safety rules say Shuttles can’t face winds at the pad greater than 80 miles per hour. Avoiding freak hailstorms is a good thing as well. In February of last year, Atlantis was at the pad when golf ball sized chunks of ice started falling from a violent pop-up thunderstorm. The ice chunks peppered the upper nose of the external fuel tank, leaving the divots you see to the left. Liftoff was delayed until June of 2007 for repairs. Hence the weather worries with Hanna.

On the book front, I had an enjoyable talk with Karen Feagins of WJCT in Jacksonville about “Final Countdown”. The interview airs tomorrow and Saturday on the Jacksonville NPR affiliate. I’ve been invited to talk about the book during the Florida Heritage Book Festival, and Karen will be introducing me at the event. She, no doubt, drew the short straw and lost ;). Here’s a link to the festival if you like…

http://www.fhbookfest.com/ 

More to come…

Photo courtesy of NASA