Man watches space shuttle launch... from his allotment in ENGLAND

Daily Mail (UK) ^ | 4th September 2009

[naturalman1975]

A man watched the launch of the space shuttle Discovery in America from his allotment in England.

Donald Lyven, 53, saw the spaceship lift off in Florida on his television just after 5am, then amazingly spotted it in the skies near his home just 20 minutes later.

The decorator even captured the Nasa craft on camera as he saw it fly past overhead.

The fainter trail from the spacecraft is from the main fuel tank, which is ditched during launch.

'It was an absolutely magnificent sight and I don't think many people would have known about it and seen it,' said Mr Lyven, from Finchley, Herts.

'Because of the angle of the orbit I knew the space shuttle would come over the UK so I watched it take off on TV, then drove to my allotments to see it go past.

'Sure enough 20 minutes later it appeared from the West and it's orange fuel tank was visible for three minutes. It was remarkable.'

[naturalman1975]

[American Constitutionalist]

Kool

[Gil4]

Contrails. Take cover

[cripplecreek]

Very cool. Unfortunately I live in a place where I’ll never see it upon take off or reentry.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Wow, I’ve never heard of that before (somebody seeing the shuttle with the naked eye 20 minutes after launch thousands of miles away). Very cool.

Off-topic...why do the Brits call their housing developments or apartments “allotments”? Are you allotted just so much land or apartment space? Is this rationing? Did they run out of space and create a central bureau to allot what is left?

[Rebelbase]

When I a kid I watched an Apollo night shot launch on TV and then a couple of minutes later watched the fireball and first stage separation from outside, 200 mi away.

[Rebelbase]

Isn’t the Space Shuttle in orbit within 20 minutes?

[naturalman1975]

An allotment is actually a small garden allocated to an individual located on communal land - a way for those living in houses that don’t have gardens of their own to have a garden. You pay a fee and the local council ‘allots’ you a particular plot of land.

[stormer]

For those interested in shuttle, ISS, or other satellite viewing opportunities: http://www.heavens-above.com/

[I Buried My Guns]

When I lived in CA I saw the contrail of a (I think) Minuteman missile that was launched from Vandenberg. They set them off every so often to test them, I was told. anyway, I was in San Jose, a few hundred miles to the north, and the contrail, about a hundred miles high and intact in one long piece, went way up into the ionosphere or lithosphere or whatever, and was different colors along it's length, like a rainbow due to the way sunlight interacted with our atmosphere.

It gave me a warm fuzzy feeling because is was an American-made rainbow with a nuclear bomb at the end, which I thought was super neat, but I'm a dork that way.

[Kirkwood]

This is a time lapse photo of light reflected off the shuttle and fuel tank. Not a photo of contrails. You can see a couple of stars also.

[ozark hilljilly]

It gave me a warm fuzzy feeling because is was an American-made rainbow with a nuclear bomb at the end, which I thought was super neat, but I'm a dork that way.

Me too! I grew up in Cal. and the "Vandenberg sunsets" are a fond memory for me.

[naturalman1975]

Oh - and the allotment system isn’t some new idea. It dates back to late 18th and early 19th century when ‘common land’ that had been farmed by ordinary people for centuries was ‘enclosed’, fenced off for farming by larger landowners. The allotment system was developed so ordinary people still had places to grow vegetables and even today an allotment is intended to be a place urban dwellers grow vegetables for your own family. There are allotments even in large cities like London (there’s current controversy because some of the land used for these for over a century was compulsorily acquired by the government to build facilites for the 2012 Olympics. The government has had to provide an alternative for the plotholders and undertake to restore the land to its purpose as an allotment garden after the Olympics.)

[getmeouttaPalmBeachCounty_FL]

“a warm fuzzy feeling because is was an American-made rainbow with a nuclear bomb at the end”

Beautiful *sniffle*;

Simply poetic.

[A.A. Cunningham]

Discovery will seem to "flicker," then abruptly wink-out 8 minutes and 24 seconds after launch as the main engines shut-down and the huge, orange, external tank (ET) is jettisoned over the Atlantic at a point about 795 statute miles uprange (to the northeast) of Cape Canaveral and some 430 statute miles southeast of New York City. At that moment, Discovery will have risen to an altitude of 341,200 feet (64.6 statute miles), while moving at 17,552 mph (mach 24.6) and should be visible for a radius of about 770 statute miles from the point of Main Engine Cut Off (MECO).

http://www.space.com/spacewatch/090824-see-shuttle-discovery.html

[Calm_Cool_and_Elected]

I used to live about 30 miles south of Cape Canaveral and we’d watch them launch stuff on TV and then run outside and it would just be clearing the trees. I was at work and on the phone when the Challenger was last launched, heard people screaming outside and ran out to see pieces falling everywhere.

[jagusafr]

We saw Mercury go over our house in Karachi, Pakistan in ‘65 or ‘66. Very cool to a 7-year-old!

Colonel, USAFR

[paul51]

I think you may be mistaken about that

[buccaneer81]

Isn’t the Space Shuttle in orbit within 20 minutes?

Yep. Eight and a half minutes. And the tank is jettisoned before that.

[Sig Sauer P220]

Isn’t the Space Shuttle in orbit within 20 minutes?

Thats what I'm wondering. I thought the shuttle was pointed up at launch, not at a 45 degree angle.