At 08:47:04 PM EST tonight the Space Shuttle Discovery lifted off from Launch Pad 39B* at Cape Canaveral and “slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God”.
Congratulations Discovery!
* STS-116 was the last scheduled launch of a Space Shuttle from Launch Pad 39B. Until STS-125 Launch Pad 39B will be kept on standby in case of an STS-3xx (rescue) mission but afterwards will enter a renovation period for the new Ares I launch vehicle
Where oh where is that beautiful Florida weather at? It was sorely missed last night at Cape Canaveral where a friend and I had went to watch the launch of STS-116. When we left Tampa it was extremely overcast but I was hopeful (he wasn’t! LOL) that it would be less so over near the Cape.
So we got over to the Cape and it didn’t look so bad — see hoping really does help. We went to dinner at Cracker Barrel (Mmm…) and headed over to the Visitor Complex. We got there around 6PM and it was pretty cool out, almost cold, definately jacket weather though.
We had a good time exploring the rocket garden, checking out the Magnificent Desolation movie narrated by Tom Hanks in the IMAX theatre and checking out all the other touristy type things. 
Well it got to launch time and we picked out a prime spot (with some strange guy who kept tailing us) and the countdown resumed at T-9 minutes. When the count resumed the Weather Officer called a No-Go due to cloud ceiling constraints but they were going to count down to T-5 minutes and hold in the hopes that the clouds would clear. Unfortunately, just a few short minutes later it was announced that we had gone outside of the launch window and that the launch was to be scrubbed. 
Oh well — we had a good time although the car ride back to Tampa sucked. It’s funny though how the shuttle somehow seems to find a good launch day throughout the Spring/Summer/Fall rains, hurricane, thunderstorms, etc… it’s something as simple as cloud cover on this cool Winter night in December.
NASA is going to try again on Saturday & Sunday so hopefully they will be able to get it off one of those days. I have some pictures that I’ll put up in the next day or two of the rocket garden, the memorial, etc…, and a real good one of me getting frisked because of my steel toe shoes! LOL
