It looks like the Space Shuttle's future flights have been grounded. What a disappointment! I hope the shuttle makes it home safely. Here is a portion of an article in the Daytona News-Journal today. It describes the excitment of a launch:

A Florida ritual: We're out to launch
I watched the take-off of the space shuttle Discovery from a rooftop along with about a dozen others. Below us, in the parking lot, people had gathered in groups of three and four.
All across town, you could see same thing happening in the last moments of countdown: People clustering in parking lots, on the beach, on sidewalks, the top of bridges and in the middle of lawns. All around Central Florida people stopped working, summer classes let out, shoppers left the store, joggers stopped running, office-building workers found their way to the top floors, cars pulled up on the beach or over to the side of the road.
Here, the launch watchers -- as opposed to people who are randomly staring into space -- could be identified by the tilt of their necks and the way they all faced south-southeast. The more experienced watchers had arms extended, pointing out the right section of the sky to the others