Looking forward to Saturday, although there's apparently a 40% chance of shitty weather again. And all manned rocket launches are cool - anyone that's got balls (or ovaries) enough to strap themselves in on top of a bomb and get blasted into orbit has my respect!
We were lucky enough to have the "NASA - A Human Adventure" exhibition at the QLD Museum last year - a history of space flight from the 1950's through to the end of the shuttle program, including the space race with the Soviet Union. Heaps and heaps of old gear, flight suits, full scale replicas of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo capsules, and a mock-up of a Space Shuttle flight deck. The Mercury and Gemini capsules were nothing more than aluminium cans and even the shuttle control consoles looked more like the Chernobyl control room than the flight deck of the Enterprise. I could have geeked out for hours at the exhibition, but the wife and kids didn't share my enthusiasm.