My primary purpose in heading down to Florida and Cape Canaveral was to see the launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis on Mission STS-125 (also known as Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Mission 4 or HST-SM4).

I had visited Cape Canaveral several times over the years including one visit to see a Skylab Saturn 1B launch but, to my regret, I never saw a Saturn V launch.

I picked this mission to see as it would be the last time there were two shuttles on two pads (Atlantis on LC39A and Endeavour on LC39B), a rare event that has occurred only 18 times during the thirty year shuttle program.

There were four parts to this trip:

• The actual STS-125 Mission launch;
• A visit to the Kennedy Space Centre visitor centre;
• A tour of the whole of Cape Canaveral (Kennedy Space Centre and Patrick AFB) on the “Cape Canaveral: Then And Now” Tour;
• A look at an alternative launch viewing site at Titusville.

I had arranged the launch viewing through Gray Line who organised everything including pickup at a location close to my hotel, all tickets, transport within KSC to the launch viewing site and then the journey back to my original pickup point.

However, my carefully made plans were thrown into total disarray when, in a late decision, NASA moved the launch date forward one day to Monday May 11th.  This proved to be a major problem for me because, due to work commitments, I could not get to Washington DC until Saturday May 9th.  I was faced with a 850 mile journey in about 36 hours to get to my hotel in Orlando ready to be picked up early on the 11th by the tour company to go to KSC.  I made it but it was not exactly fun start to the holiday.

A couple of useful web sites that I found:

• The Encyclopedia Astronautica contains information on everything space related including a map of the Cape Canaveral launch site area.
• A site run by Spaceline that as it says is “Dedicated To Covering The Past, Present And Future Of Cape Canaveral”.

Note that since I was there the Space Shuttle Atlantis Exhibit has opened so quite a lot has changed in the Visitors Centre.