Shuttle Landing

[chrisd596]

Hey Guys:
The Shuttle will be landing on Sunday, August 7th at 5:30 in the morning.
We will be leaving WDW that morning and heading down to Vero Beach. Usually we head down to Vero past the Kennedy Space Station. We leave about 11am so the landing should be over by then.

Any suggestions pertaining to seeing the landing. Can it be seen from WDW? I guess driving over towards Kennedy would be really crowded????? If it can be seen from WDW area, I might wait and see it and then leave for Vero.

Any suggestions from Disney Veterans on seeing the Shuttle Land.

Thanks
chris

 

[rkdahl]

Hi Chris,
No you will not be able to see the shuttle land from WDW. It's like watching a commerical airliner land and you'd be over 50 miles away. Even watching it from Titusville is challenging depending on haze and cloud cover. The landing strip from there is still about 6 miles away. You can see it, but it's quiet and silent and relatively small, not like watching a launch with the noise, rocket boosters and smoke trail.

So I'd suggest that unless you want to swing by Titusville and watch from the waters edge that you wouldn't see much of the landing from elsewhere.

 

[DukeStreetKing]

You should be able to hear it as it breaks the sound barrier. It creates two seperate "booms" as first the nose and then the tail break through.

 

[poohj80]

A Shuttle landing is not really much to see especially compared with a Shuttle launch. The folks above have described it pretty well, although watching it land out in CA was pretty cool but we could be a lot closer than in FL.

 

[sorcerermick]

Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't the shuttle land out west, and not back at kennedy Space Center?

 

[DukeStreetKing]

The shuttle lands back in Florida at KSC, unless weather or some kind of other problem prevents that. Then it will land in CA and get a piggyback ride to Florida.

I know of one instance where it landed in CA, maybe there were others.

 

[poohj80]

Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't the shuttle land out west, and not back at kennedy Space Center?

The preferred landing is at KSC. CA is the back-up landing spot if weather or whatever makes it unfavorable for the Shuttle to land in FL. Sometimes NASA even keeps the Shuttle in orbit an extra day to allow a FL landing over CA due to the logistics involved with getting the Shuttle back to FL if it lands in CA.

 

[sorcerermick]

Thanks for clearing that up!

 

[poohj80]

The Shuttle landing is now scheduled for Monday August 8 at 4:37 AM EST.