News-Press from Fort Myers, Florida • Page 4

A4 THE NtWS-PRESS, NATION WORLD, THURSDAY, JULY 7, 2011 HUT11E Rfl final umra Catch glimpse of the shuttle MEMORIES launch from Southwest Florida If the sky is clear Friday morning, Southwest Floridians will be able to see the space shuttle Atlantis lift off from Cape Canaveral. In large directional terms, Atlantis will be visible in northeast, but "northeast covers a large part of the horizon. To be more precise, you can use a compass and a map to determine the heading between your viewing site and Cape Canaveral. If you are in Golden Gate, for example, the heading would be 21 degrees, while in Boca Grande, the heading would be 39 degrees. Kennedy Space Center Atlantic Ocean AMANDA INSCORETHE NEWS-PRESS Above, Lynn Ebaugh was serving in the Army Reserves when her unit was called up to help with the landing of the Columbia shuttle in White Sands, N.M., in March 1982.

Ebaugh, who then lived in Texas, saved a copy of The El Paso Times from the landing. She also saved a newspaper from when the Columbia shuttle exploded upon re-entry in 2003. She is shown at right in the sandstorm before the landing. Continued from A1 The button can be triggered once the boosters fall off and are descending over water to prevent them from reaching land and potentially riarming onlookers but not while they are still attached to the shuttle. "What happened was that my ship was sittingunder it when it happened and exploded and they knew that I had the red button on the ship," Arens said A high-ranking military officer cafledArens shortly after the incident and began asking questions.

"I knew right away I was a suspect," Arens said. He maintained his innocence, stating he had not been authorized to blow up the boosters and had, therefore, not done so. Suspicion implicating Arens was short-lived. Shortly after, it was revealed that a faulty O-ring seal was the culprit Lynn Ebaugh fought a blinding sandstorm in New Mexico to help with a shuttle landing in March 1982. "You could reach out and touch the person next to you, but you couldn't see them because the sandstorms were so bad," she said.

Ebaugh, 53, of Fort Myers, was called out of her Army Reserve unit to help with medical calls as Columbia touched dowa Her unit only received one call, but it came just as the announcer was counting down the landing and the shuttle was coming into view. A soldier stationed on the perimeter had scraped his back against a tank, but Ebaugh remembers thinking, "We're not missing this for the world." Ebaugh and two colleagues slapped a bandage on him and climbed up on the tank to take pictures. People were camped out for miles around the landing pad, Ebaugh said. NASA even left the shuttle on the pad for a few days so visitors could see it. "It was just really cool to see everybody getting into it and getting excited," she said.

hU xico El COMPASS HEADING Where to look Boca Grande Check Bokeelia I your smart- North Cape Coral 1 fifffl- LJ i- Southwest Florida International Airport I a compass reaiure. Golden Gate Ll, THE NEWS-PRESS SW Floridians can see launch LOCAL EVENT What: The Calusa Nature Center and Planetarium's presentation of "The Space Shuttle: On the Wings of a Dream," a 25-minute, full-dome show covering the history of the space shuttle program. When: 3 p.m., Friday-July 20, July 22-31 and August 1-31. Where: 3450 Ortiz Ave. Cost: $9 admission to the Nature Center covers cost of planetarium shows.

cue missioa "Some guys said they saw pieces falling in the water," Pambuena said. "That's how close we were." The Coast Guard and several NASA astronauts and technicians worked for five days pulling pieces of the shuttle out of the water. One large piece they picked up with a crane in the middle of the night stuck in Pam-buena's mind. 'And the piece comes on board and there was almost like a reverence to the piece," he said. "It was almost like you were picking up a body.

There was this quiet" Pambuena was amazed at the skill with which NASA personnel recognized each tiny piece of the shuttle. "This was so personal for them," he said. Thomas Gills can watch the culmination of the shuttle program with a feeling of satisfaction. He has put in hours of overtime designing equipment that made the launches possible. The 63-year-old Cape Coral resident worked as a civil engineer with NASA from 1973 until 1980.

His firm, Cornell, Meticals and Eddie, designed two launch complexes for the Apollo project, and then redesigned them for the shuttle project. Gills also managed the design of a shuttle-testing facility in Hunstville, to test fuel tanks for dangerous leaks. "It was very exciting and rewarding, especially when you watch the program progress and the space station being built," Gills said. Money was no object to NASA back then, but time was. "A lot of times we had to work long, long hours," he said.

PI IL.7 mm i Wir-W got his chance last May when the Endeavour took off. It's hard to describe the difference between seeing a shuttle launch on TV and seeing it in person, said Paluzzi, 40, of Fort Myers. "You actually feel it You feel the shuttle launch," Paluzzi said. "You don't just see it and hear it I guess that's the biggest difference." Spectators see the shuttle start to lift off before they hear the sound waves roll in, he said. Paluzzi saw the May launch through his work as a freelancer for Fox News.

Witnessing something as a journalist gives it a special perspective, he said. "You sit back and you realize you're at a location a lot of times that's a part of history," Paluzzi said. While he would like his 7-year-old son to have an opportunity to see a launch as well, he's not sure if he will brave the drive to Cape Canaveral. "It's kind of a pain to get there," Paluzzi said. He hopes the program is replaced by something bigger and better.

"It always brings hope," he said. "You know every time it goes up it's just the hope that we'll find out more, not just about our planet but possibly other things out there." Diane Pfister got a sneak peak into the shuttle program in 1974 long before most even knew it existed. Through a friend of a friend, Pfister and her husband received a private tour of NASAs Johnson Space Center inHoustoa The tour included a 3-foot-long model of the shuttle that would eventually launch in 1981. Pfister, a 65-year-old Fort Myers resident, said that after watching the moon landing she didn't question the possibility of any of it "Oh, it was real exciting because you knew you had learned about it before most people had even heard of the program," Pfister said. "Makes you feel special" Though she had no interest in NASA before the tour, afterward Pfister started reading all the shuttle pre-flight publicity and watching as many launches as she could on TV "It was a very exciting and useful program," she said.

"It's something people can take pride ia" BY KEVIN LOLLAR It ain't rocket science, but you do need to know where to look. On a clear day, a space shuttle launch can be seen from Southwest Florida, more than 150 miles from Cape Canaveral. So, if Atlantis lifts off as scheduled at 11:40 a.m. Friday, and if the sky is clear, Southwest Floridians can be spectators to the end of an era, the 135th and last mission of NASA's shuttle program. It's just a matter of facing the right direction.

"You can see it anywhere you have a good northeast view, and hope for no clouds," said Carole Holmberg, planetarium director of the Calusa Nature Center and Planetarium. "A lot of people can see it from their backyards or a safe rooftop. You don't have to go anywhere special." The key, of course, is a clear view to the northeast horizon. A particularly good viewing site is anywhere with a large body of water to the northeast, Pine Island amateur astronomer Mo Mollen said. "The clearest I've seen it is at Bokeelia," he said.

"Up there, you have an unfettered view over Charlotte Harbor. But I don't want a lot of people coming up to Bokeelia, so you can say St. James City." Unfortunately, even with clear skies and an unobstructed northeast view, trying to photograph Adantis from Southwest Florida would be an exercise in futility, said Ed Malawskey, president of the Fort Myers Camera Club. "It would be a speck," he said. "It's too far away.

I could have the biggest lens I could buy and not get anything." TERRY ALLEN WILLIAMSTHE NEWS-PRESS Larry Clase shows a portrait of his father, Larry Lee Clase, who worked for NASA. For Larry Clase, 49, of North Fort Myers, the final launch will be a bittersweet reminder of his father. Clase's father, who died in 2003, worked at the Kennedy Space Center fueling rockets. "He's somewhere else launching rockets now," Clase said. Clase grew up with rocket launches.

From the time he was 2 years old until he was 11, Clase and his family would watch from the roof of a Winn-Dixie near their home in Titusville. "You could actually feel the big grocery store shaking beneath you as the (rocket) took off," Clase said. "It was like a minor earthquake." Clase's father was laid off in 1973. 'After that we were just like everyone else," he said. "We were just spectators to the television." Clase plans to watch the last launch on TV if it takes off at a reasonable hour, and he might step outside for a minute to take a look.

"It's something that can't be replaced," he said. Every time Al Pambuena sees a shuttle launch, he can't help but remember pulling pieces of the Challenger out of the ocean after it blew up in 1986. The morning the shuttle launched, the 64-year-old Cape Coral resident was on a Coast Guard ship on his way to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Everyone had crowded along the ship's rails to watch. Then the emergency alarm went off, and the ship's engine gunned into high speed.

They were now on a res- Jit I 4 A photo by John Paluzzi of Fort Myers, who shot the Endeavour launch in May. John Paluzzi had always wanted to see a shuttle launch, and he finally j-i nniMli tii at ilJ The space shuttle Challenger explodes shortly after lifting off from Kennedy Space Center in this Jan. 28, 1986, photo. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Atlantis' launch will be visible from Southwest Florida if there are no clouds between here and Cape Canaveral. It is due to lift off Friday morning, but NASA forecasters are currently saying it is likely the weather will cause a postponement.

The forecast improves slightly for the 1'" i ii House panel proposes cutting NASAk budget "I believe the subcommittee (bill) achieves significant spending reduction goals while at the same time preserving core priorities," said Rep. Frank Wolf, who heads the subcommittee. "Despite the difficult choices that were made, this legislation includes a number of positive initiatives to create jobs by promoting economic growth and innovation here at home." Wolf's appropriations counterpart in the Senate, Sen. Barbara Mikulski, criticized the cuts and said the administration would have to fight them. "I think eliminating the James Webb Telescope is misguided and shortsighted," Mikulski said.

"It is a telescope that will be 100 times more powerful than the Hubble, so for the advancement of science, innovation, astronomy, the James Webb Telescope is important to us and the international science community." Mikulski suggested the White House would have to actively defend funding for NASA and the telescope. NASA spokesman David Weaver said the House cuts would delay development of commercial rockets to transport people to the International Space Station while NASA pursues deep-space explo- BY BART JANSEN The News-Press Washington Bureau WASHINGTON NASA's budget would be cut by $1.6 billion to $16.8 billion under a spending bill a House panel released Wednesday. The fiscal 2012 spending bill from the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees NASA would provide $3.65 billion for ration. "NASA's budget submission already reflects tough decisions required in these difficult fiscal times," Weaver said. The spending bill that funds NASA also funds other agencies, such as the Commerce and Justice departments.

The House panel will vote today on its draft. The full House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to consider it July 13. space exploration $152 million less than current spending. It also would terminate the James Webb Space Telescope, which has been plagued by cost overruns and delays. The proposed cuts, unveiled on the eve of the shuttle program's retirement, are part of a plan to reduce NASA's budget nearly 9 percent overall in the fiscal year that begins Oct.

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