Atlantis Has Landed

[Kat]

Touchdown!

I was reading with the TV off and heard a faraway double bang. The windows rattled a bit.
I thought "The shuttle is landing!"
I turned on the TV and it took 6 minutes from my hearing the double sonic boom until touchdown at the Cape landing strip.
Whew!
It was goosebumps all the way.
They show the shuttle in infra-red and it glows in the dark from the heat. Then we get to watch from their instrument panel on the "dash." Then the actual Shuttle comes into the picture from over our heads, the camera trained on the very beginning of the landing strip. It's this huge, lumbering thing that appears out of the darkness. It is still dark out.
Only 15 night time landings so far.
Whew!
It never becomes routine, it always seems a miracle!

[joe]

Wow, Kat! I guess living in FL has its advantages. Pretty nifty!

[Kat]

Well, I have cracks in my window panes from the double sonic booms!
I thought about billing NASA for replacements!
But that would really be the taxpayers- like you!

[snokkums]

That's got to be so cool to see the shuttle landing! Sometimes I wish I lived in Florida.

[Kat]

I've never seen the shuttle land, in person. Only on TV.
At night, if the approach is from the north or west, they say it's possible to see it go over. But the timing has got to be right. By the time the double sonic boom happens it is too late- it is gone over already. And it's 6 more minutes to the coast. That is twice the speed of sound- but I don't know how fast that is- but that's why it's almost too late to see it.
I've tried spotting it, but have not.

This most recent flight plan brought it up from the south. That is hard to hear and impossible to see from where I live.

The take-offs are another story!
I've had people from the Chesapeake Bay area say they have seen the latter stages of a shuttle lift off, which surprised me!

Do they show the landing on TV elsewhere as it is happening?