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As someone whom lived on the space coast almost all my life I can tell you that is a crazy site to see in person, when the shuttle is flying piggy back like that.
I was driving up A1A one day and was just in front of Patrick Airforce base (back when they used to have the old rockets out front) Then all of the sudden the Shuttle flys right by us on the back of it's transport jet right up the coast line.
They were doing a flyby of Patrick AFB on the way back to Kennedy AFB. I don't think I'll ever forget seeing that, much the same as watching the Challenger blow up from the window of my history class room, which was rather ironic.
The space program brought a lot of jobs to to this country and the tech advances made because of it are invaluable, for those that see no benefit.
Just a random tidbit, one of my uncles used to work at the press room at Kennedy AFB and I watched every single shuttle launch at the cape from the first til the 21th when I was a kid thanks to always getting viewer passes. My step father also used to work on the recovery team, so he used to help the astronauts get into their space suits and always flew out to the salt flats when it was expected to land out there.
I used to have a shit load of space memorabilia as you can imagine, every thing from early shuttle concept pictures to autographs of the guys that flew it. Sadly it was all lost in a fire.
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