We are flying for Florida this very afternoon! We will try this space shuttle thing again and hope for more success. Last time was a success, albeit somewhat disappointing, just because I got to see the Space Center! This time, we will see a launch (I’ve been told I’m optimistic at work, so I’m trying to live up to it).
The past 17 months since the last time we went down I have actually been trying to get tickets for every launch since that one. Naturally just about every launch between last May and now has launched ON TIME in the FIRST window. We hope to get some of that action this week.
The trouble with getting tickets this time around was that NASA changed their ticket giving policy since they anticipated more people wanting to come down to see one of these last launches (they were right).
The old system was a simple checkout procedure that allowed you to purchase tickets at 8:00 AM and whoever could get to the “submit” button first after putting in their credit card info and address, well they got the tickets.
I guess NASA thought this was unfair for those of you who can’t type as fast as me (note that I got the tickets last time 
) so they rejiggered the system. Now you submit your name into the list of thousands of people and a computer randomly picks 2000 to get causeway tickets, and another thousand or so to go to the visitor complex etc.
I was not picked for any of these tickets.
So I tried another route. I had heard you could just email your senator / governor and request tickets through them. They in turn send your name to NASA which then sits on a waiting list. The good news is, if they get to you, you get to have VIP seating and go for FREE. The bad news is, by the time I got on the list there were probably 10,000 people in front of me.
I was not picked for those tickets either.
I also entered my name in a drawing (which was probably only intended for children) on a website that was giving away free space shuttle launch viewing tickets.
I was not picked for those tickets.
Then NASA decided to do what’s called a Tweetup. This is an opportunity for people who use Twitter to get Super VIP passes for the launch. You actually get to go down to the launch pad the day before and watch them retract the service structure from the Shuttle for launch. You get to watch the launch from the Press Site which is only 3 miles from the pad!
Shiraz and I estimated 2500 people signed up for the drawing. They were only picking 150. It actually was closer to 3000 people that signed up. That makes it a 5% chance of getting to go. Not terrible odds really.
I was not picked for those tickets either.
So I thought STS 133 was out and was preparing to transition to STS 134, when I got an email from NASA reminding me that I hadn’t been chosen (thanks) but at the bottom of the email they reminded me that they had sold a handful of tickets to two tour organizations in Orlando and those tickets would go on sale the next morning at 7 AM CST.
I knew about these tour organizations and had shy’d away from them previously because they put lots of extra rules on their tickets and costs. I re-read their website and found that they had removed most if not all of these extra costs and rules so as to be more like NASA.
I had a meeting from 6:30 to 7:30 the next morning so I was not confident there would be any tickets left by the time I could purchase them.
But I logged in to the first tour companies website at 7:45 to see if they had any tickets left.
Sold out.
I logged into the second tour companies website. This website happened to be one of the SLOWEST websites ever created. In fact, I’m guessing they had to have designed it to be slow, because there’s not way it could be this slow just because of traffic. Not only that, but it was very poorly designed visually. For example, when you went to select a “Causeway” ticket to see if there were any left a “Please Wait” sign popped up. HOWEVER, the “Causeway” tickets were at the bottom of the page and you had to scroll to them, and the “Please Wait” sign was at the top of the page and now out of view. This “Please Wait” sign probably sat there for 3 minutes before anything popped up telling me yes / no whether tickets were available.
There WERE causeway tickets still available! But remember, this is the worlds slowest website. Every click to another page takes 3 minutes or more. I made the mistake of adding two tickets to the Visitor Complex before I found out that the Causeway tickets were still available.
I made it all the way to the checkout before I realized I needed to remove the Visitor Complex tickets. This required even more clicking (and waiting) and clicking (and waiting).
It was well PAST 9 AM by the time I finally made it to the checkout and had entered my info and clicked submit. It was definitely possible someone else slipped past me and was quicker at getting their info submitted.
But there came the confirmation email saying they had taken my money. I didn’t believe it though, so I called them, and they confirmed it on the phone too!
I had STS 133 tickets to the causeway!
Then things went into full speed for vacation preps. Because they don’t sell these tickets until 3-4 weeks before launch, it’s impossible for you to get all your reservations nailed down. Now that I had the tickets, I could start to price watch. However, I didn’t want to secure anything that I couldn’t back out on since the launch date wasn’t finalized yet.
They don’t actually finalize the launch date until about a week from launch. I like to buy my plane tickets etc. about 2-3 weeks before launch because that’s the best time for prices. I got a great deal on the airline tickets, but here’s the lesson learned from this trip.
NEVER bundle a rental car with your cheap airline tickets. The cheap airline is just that – a cheap AIRLINE. I found way cheaper car rentals on Priceline and later found out that the airline company would not CANCEL my car rental, they would only CREDIT the cost of the rental to my account.
So here we are – the day of the flight down. I tend to not sleep the week leading up to the launch. And that’s actually why I was up at 5 AM this morning and why I have time to write this post before I head to work (they changed the lock combination yesterday and I forgot to get the new one, otherwise I’d be at work right now).
Pray for a safe flight, good weather, no technical issues, and that everything goes smoothly on the first launch attempt. And most of all, that Laura and I can enjoy the trip no matter what!
Go Discovery!
I want to see a space shuttle launch.
I’ve always wanted to see a space shuttle launch
When I was younger, I used to wake up at 3 in the morning just so I could watch the space shuttle launch or land.In fact, I would sleep in the TV room with my digital watch smashed between my head gear (for my teeth) and my ear.That way I would hear my alarm go off and wouldn’t have to get up but could just turn the TV on.
Alex and I used to take cardboard box lids and draw “complicated” gauges and dials on them and number pads and position them all around us as we lay on the floor and did simulated rocket launches.
I watched Space Camp and the Challenger Investigation video so much that the VHS tapes were almost burnt up.
I would record hours and hours of NASA TV on tapes and not let ANYONE touch them because I might just want to watch that launch or landing again.Incidentally, I’ve never watched any of those VHS videos again, but I kept them, just in case
During college my desire didn’t go away, but got preempted by the less exciting but more important aspects of education.I did however get the chance to see an Astronaut speak once and watched as many launches as I could be near my computer for.
When I heard that the space shuttle was going to be retired in 2010 I resolved in my heart to see a launch before I it retired.Last year at Iowa State, with the help of family, Laura and I decided that we would try to go see a launch sometime this year.What with her school and scheduling a trip around a particular launch, it’s been difficult to get the trip off the ground.
This week, the pieces are finally falling into place.Actually the first piece fell into place last summer when my parents graciously gave us permission to use their resort in Orlando for our vacation.This was for my Birthday last year on June 1.I also got some graduation money from other relatives and placed it in the “Florida” fund. It didn’t work out to go down that summer (2008) because of my new job and I was already taking time off for Boundary Waters.During the school year, it’s almost impossible to get Laura a week off, so that left this summer 2009.
As the winter months ticked by I watched the launch schedule weekly if not daily.Unfortunately, there were no launches scheduled for this summer.There was one in May, and one in August, but none in June or July when school was out.About 3 months ago, I noted that they had scheduled the Hubble mission (STS-125) right over top of STS – 127 in May.This seemed odd to me as it’s impossible to launch two shuttles at the same time.I decided it must mean they were going to delay one of the two missions into the summer gap.I found out the double schedule was because the Hubble mission was not for sure yet.NASA didn’t want to commit to it in case the Hubble broke down again (as it did last year right before they had tried to launch this mission).If that happened, then the Hubble mission was off, and STS-127 would be in May and there would potentially be no summer launch for me to go see.If the Hubble mission did go ahead, the STS-127 mission would delay to June 13th.
Perfect, right in the middle of the summer.Now I had my potential date, but nothing is for sure with NASA.Dad and I made several plans, but couldn’t solidify any of them until the Hubble mission actually launched and we could be fairly sure that STS-127 would be in June.
On Monday I watched with great excitement the launch of STS-125, the Hubble mission.I was happy, not only because I like watching shuttle launches, but because this began to pave the way for me to view the June 13th launch.On another front, I had been watching Allegiant Air’s ticket prices from Cedar Rapids to Orlando for the June 11th flight.They had been as high as $149 per person per way and had been steadily coming down as the 30 day mark came closer.I had watched the site enough to know that they usually went to $69 per person per day about 30 days out and that was about as good as you were going to get.
Sure enough, last week they went to $69.But the launch hadn’t happened yet, I didn’t want to order my tickets and then have the Hubble mission get delayed.So this week, after we had a successful Hubble mission launch, I ordered my tickets and Dad reserved the resort.I reserved a car the next day which only left the actual tickets for viewing the launch left to buy.
I happened to go to the site that was selling the tickets on Tuesday, the day after the Hubble mission launched.Now I had been to the site before, but it had always be advertising tickets for the Hubble mission, and they don’t sell tickets for any other mission except the one that’s coming up next.Tuesday they finally updated their site to get ready for the STS-127 ticket sale event.It is, in fact, an event similar to buying tickets to see a really really good movie that has been anticipated for about 5 years.The reason being is that they only sell about 2000 tickets per launch.“Two thousand, that sounds like a lot” you say.I thought that too, until I read some people’s stories online about trying to buy tickets and having them sell out within minutes – MINUTES – of going on sale.Also, people warned that you have to get ALL THE WAY through the purchase process and get a confirmation email before you’re guaranteed to have your tickets.In other words, clicking buy doesn’t reserve the tickets for you.Clicking confirm at the end of the purchase form does.So you have to get all the way through the form before everyone else does in order to get your tickets.
The message on the site Tuesday said “Tickets will go on sale on Wednesday at 9:00 AM EST.”I figured the whole “selling out in minutes” was probably an exaggeration, but I wasn’t going to take that chance.I got in to work at my usual 7:15 this morning and first thing set an alarm for 7:55.I wrote out all my information into a notepad document and double checked it all so that I could just copy and paste the fields into the order form when it became available.I went to the website and hit refresh a couple of times.I got the “Tickets will go on sale at 9:00 AM EST” message again so I knew I had to wait.
7:55 came and my alarm went off.
I pulled up an online clock of Greenwich mean time adjusted to central standard time so I would know exactly when it went to 8:00AM (9:00 EST).I hit refresh every minute and got the same “Tickets will go on sale at 9:00 AM EST” message.At 7:59 I started hitting refresh every 20 seconds, just in case they let us in early.
“Tickets will go on sale at 9:00 AM EST”
At 7:59:50 I hit refresh every second.
“Tickets will go on sale at 9:00 AM EST”
I remembered what people had said about being part of the way through buying their tickets and having them sell out.My hands began to shake as I held the mouse.
I hit refresh at 8:00 AM – the page changed.The message now said “Buy Now!”I selected the ticket I wanted and the purchase form came up.
Now my hands were really shaking.I realized in my haste to have everything ready, I had totally forgotten to type my address out beforehand.Quickly I typed and double checked my address.I copy and pasted my credit card information and selected 2 tickets (one for me, and one for Laura).
I hit submit.
I looked at the clock – it was 8:03AM
I waited for two seconds.
Then, the confirmation page came up.I checked my email, and sure enough, I was confirmed two tickets had been purchased.I double checked everything again just to make sure I hadn’t made a mistake in my haste but everything looked good.
Phew well I guess those people saying everything sells out in two minutes were exaggerating right?
I went back to the main page and hit refresh again – the page now read SOLD OUT
It was 8:04AM
