It was dark when we left the house and still dark an hour and a half later when I woke up in the car, mumbled something incoherent and fell back asleep.  Fortunately I must have only been half asleep for I woke up five minutes before our exit.

Four, three, two, one the crowd across the river inlet shouted.  We scrambled to get our cameras and video equipment together as the hundreds of people in the river excitedly surged forward.

We watched the final shuttle launch from Space View Park in Titusville.  To be more precise, we actually watched it knee deep in the river that separates Titusville from Kennedy Space Center. With little space left on the shore by the time we arrived, we followed the lead of others and headed into the water.  Surrounding us were families, groups of college students and friends all who had driven through the night to be at the final shuttle launch.  Everyone waded into the murky water with rolled up pants and shorts, clutching cameras and tying cell phones to drawstrings and straps.  It was so crowded in the water that one guy near us joked that we should scream “Gator” to give us some breathing space.

31 years after launching the first shuttle into space NASA launched its 135^th flight, 33^rd on the space shuttle Atlantis, on its final journey.  It was a momentous occasion according to the newscasters. The end of an era they said on NPR. The end of our space age, said others.  In truth, it was no different than any other shuttle launch; we were the ones that gave it sentimental significance.  We were the ones who bought “grand finale” t-shirts, grilled hot dogs for breakfast and shuttle keychain necklaces.

We were hoping to see people dressed up like aliens, astronauts or at the very least a few star trek characters. We expected to see new age space hippies and perhaps even a few protestors.  In the end the crowd was disappointingly normal.  Plenty of parents with half-asleep children sprawled out on the sidewalk.  Small groups of high school students who were only half absorbing a teacher’s lesson about gas in space.  People spoke of space tourism and Virgin Galactic and how for the next few years our astronauts would be riding home with the Russians.  We met a group of twenty-somethings from Atlanta who had driven through the night playing trivial pursuit in the hopes of keeping the driver awake.  The only people we saw dressed up were kids in orange astronaut costumes.  Otherwise it was a group of remarkably normal people, most admitting to be shuttle launch virgins, all eyes trained on one glowing orange ball 12 miles in the distance.

From where we stood we had an excellent view of the shuttle.  As we saw the yellows and oranges of the blast, the crowd cheered for a moment and then got quiet.  It took less than a minute for the shuttle to disappear quietly into the clouds, leaving behind it a trail white smoke.  Even from 12 miles away it was beautiful and although I’ve seen a space shuttle up close before it was remarkable how big the shuttle looked jetting off into space.

For a few moments after Atlantis disappeared from view the crowd was silent, waiting for the noise of launch.  It crept up on us, so subtly that at first we thought the fighter jets were overhead again.  Quickly the rumbling grew into what was unmistakably the shuttle.  For a few second the water rippled and the ground seemed to shake.   The silent crowd exploded in congratulatory cheering as families hugged and couples kissed.

 It took us two and a half hours to get back to our car, but despite walking it the whole way, we made it out of Titusville well before those that had parked near Space View Park.  Some news estimates report a million people converged on Cape Canaveral- if that’s the case then each one of them drove their own car.  We parked nearly five miles from where we wanted to watch, afraid we’d be hit by the $60 parking I’d read about online. (We could have watched the shuttle from less than ½ a mile from where we parked, but we wanted the atmosphere of Space View Park).

Editors Note: While this was NASA’s last shuttle flight, there are still plenty of other launches, like satellites and scientific equipment that occur at Cape Canaveral.  You can read more about Obama’s decision to end the shuttle program and encourage private, commercial space programs here. What do you think? Should space be a commercial industry?