My personal connections to the Shuttle era are not major, just
that of a SF fan and space geek who was about to hit my teens
as Apollo was winding down.

At one point, at the Man and his World fair that succeeded Expo
67 in Montreal until 1975, I had the opportunity to watch the
first ever live televised Soyuz launch, while speaking in Russian
to a couple of staffers at the Russian Pavilion.

One upgrade that STS 1 was in time for at our home was a
colour TV. In fact, by April 1981, we had two colour sets. By
running the cable extension back upstairs, I was able to put the
13 inch set atop the console 26 inch set, then tune them to
two different channels, so that any different camera angles
would be seen simultaneously by me. That was fun.

I still have the 13 inch set, though it's just itself been retired.
The
console set, of course, is long gone.

Then, in 1983, when NASA 905 hauled Enterprise back from
the Paris Air Show, it landed for a day in Ottawa. Two pals
picked me up, and they had legit press passes, so we got to
see both vehicles very up close.

Nine years later, on my first road trip south of the DC Beltway,
among my list of Things To Do was to see a Shuttle launch.

That mission was STS 47 which launched on Sept 12, 1992.
I and some friends in another vehicle got NASA car passes.
Remember that this is long before post 9/11 security issues.

We ended up all piling into one vehicle, a minivan, and in spite
of having the road be blocked by a motorcade for Dan Quayle
(At which point, another driver called out 'he just made fifty
new Democrats'), we got to the viewing area by the water,
and our wait wasn't a long one.

Endeavour took off right on time, and the sky was almost
100% clear. Just one tiny puff of cloud up there, nowhere
near the ascent path.

The experience of feeling the launch transients was amazing.
It came though the ground and through the air. Just wow.

Given the crowds, we did some other local stuff before hitting
the road, and our own time window wasn't big, as that was a
Saturday 10:35 AM launch, and we had to be in Long Island
by the following evening. We made it. Barely. :-)

Was the Shuttle hat it should have been ? No. But, it still
was pretty amazing, and has done quite a bit.

It's high time for the next vehicle, that will advance the state
of the art. But, that's not looking very likely...