Any one who knows me well knows I spent a good junk of my teenage years at The Grape Coffee House and Bar. I have been going through all my old pictures I took at The Grape (which can be seen at the previous link) and I was wondering if I could find a copy of a new article that I was [mis]-quoted in regarding The Grape. I found a text only version of that article in the Kansas City Star's archives. There seemed to be a few scanning errors of the original text as midway through it starts talking about gardening. I have removed those parts and pieced back together the best way that makes since. Some of my fellow Grape rats are also mentioned in photo captions, sans photos in this article. I hope everyone enjoys this and that the KC Star does not object to me reposting this.

Things were slow for me today at work so I decided to follow the potential launching of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. I had been getting updates all morning from the @ExploreSpaceKSC Twitter account all morning on the status of the launch. There were a few issues that delayed the launch twice. According to Space.com the original 11 a.m. EDT launch was delayed due to "a blocked signal from the rocket's telemetry system, which enables the launch team to track the vehicle from afar." The next launch attempt at 1:30 p.m. EDT was aborted at T-1 second. According to the Falcon 9 webcast this was an automated abort made by the on-board systems due to a launch parameter being out of range. At 2:30 p.m. EDT the T-15 minute countdown restarted. At 2:45 p.m. EDT The main engines ignited and succesfully cleared the tower. At T+00:09:04 Falcon 9 achieved Earth Orbit.

I figured since I took a few pictures of the launch it would only be fitting for me to share video of Atlantis returning to Earth from its final mission.