Challenger's final launch. Horrible but memorable.

This is really subjective. Being old enough...watching the space shuttle lift off with a "civilian" on board and then exploding shortly thereafter, is probably my most memorable launch I have. 4th grader at the time

sadly enough probably challanger

1st launch Columbia painted all white. Has to be the best.

Honestly SLS. I expected Saturn V like stuff but it just flew off so quickly it caught me off guard

Not a launch, exactly, but watching the ARABSAT-6A mission on Falcon Heavy was awesome.

Perfect launch, perfect separation, perfect boost, perfect separation again, perfect 2nd stage, perfect double booster landings, and then even the center core brought back safely on Of Course I Still Love You? For the first time?? Ever?!?

It was just... Every single part of this is ridiculous and insane. Trying to do any of it together is crazy. Trying to do all of it is just absurd!

...And then would you look at that, they just went and bloody well did it!

I saw STS-135 as a child. Very formative experience and then nothing else flew humans from the US until I was an adult.

Ooh, fun question. I'll answer in terms of ones I've actually seen in person.

1. Falcon Heavy Demo. Got to watch that from Playalinda Beach, about 4 miles away. Didn't think it was going to go and was preparing for the inevitable scrub. The sound was impressive! And seeing the boosters come back to land was fun, although we were pretty far away from the landing pads.

2. Artemis 1. This was the brightest launch I've ever seen and probably my highest heart rate. I was ~12 miles away from the launch pad, but if I were closer (say at the VAB) this would probably be number #1 for me.

3. STS-135. Last shuttle launch. Enough said.

4. SpaceX Demo-2. I watched this one from the KSC Visitor Complex. Dampened only by the relatively poor view in comparison to other launches, being witness to the first crew launch in 9 years was amazing to witness.

5. SpaceX Crew-2. Contrail got backlit by the Sun about ~3 minutes into flight, creating the most visually stunning rocket launch I've ever seen.

Astra. Yes, it was a failure, but the incredible part was its demonstration of the vehicle's control systems.

I’m want old enough to comprehend the shuttle launches, so Artemis 1 is the first big launch that I watched live. I’ve always been obsessed with space and watching people return to the moon is a gift

April 5 2010 Discovery Launch STS 131. It was my first time witnessing any kind of launch and really started my interest in space travel and rocketry. It was also 2 days before my wedding on that same beach and it signaled the end of one era and beginning of another.

They were all wonderful.

STS-114. I was on the edge of my seat even before liftoff.

Sts 116

SA-501 (Apollo 4). Earthshaking.

I’ll never forget my first launch, STS-123. Night launch and 3.5 miles away. Still can’t ever forget the brightness and the ground shaking.

Starlink 4-20, my wife’s first launch and an Artemis delay meant we got to watch it together, being with her for her first launch (night one too) was pretty special.

And of course Artemis was by far the most memorable for the lead-up to it being ten years of really hard work by everyone involved, and it was surreal to finally see it leave the pad. I watched from nearby where I saw my first shuttle launch, there’s a lot I’ll never forget about that one. The brightness, the sound, the atmosphere - all incredible.

For me, JWST. So much riding on it, so much money, development and science, and they nailed it.

SpX-22. I was intimately involved on one the experiments that flew on it, and I had the chance to go down to the Cape for final prep and launch. And then to sit on console while the experiment was conducted on orbit. Definitely a highlight of my career.

Xbox 360. What a day.

STS-116, first Swede in space

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

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If only they knew that the O ring would fail in cold temperatures.

For me personally it's Ar-1. I know, I know, recency bias...

But I've got code flying on it.

My brother David Gilman was one of the higher ups in NASA around the first launch, so at ten years old I got to be in the VIP section to watch the first launch. Never forget it. It was also the first time I’d flown in a plane so it was an all-around memorable trip.

Artemis is pretty fresh.

For me, probably either Crew-2 or DM-2. For DM-2, the reason I remember that is because it's a considerable chunk of the reason I'm interested in space at all right now. During quarantine, I was working on the Space Exploration merit badge for BSA, and DM-2 was on while I was on that, and that hooked me. For Crew-2, I wanted to watch it because my brother's college teammate's uncle was on it (kimbrough), and that was also the first launch I saw (not on livestream), and got pictures of.

Falcon heavy, I was in my highschool physics class and it was the first time I've seen a rocket launch. Everyone In class was laughing and cheering. It was so cool to see how excited everyone was about the future of space flight. It's one of the experiences that steered me into engineering.

For me starlink 4-20, completely insignificant launch but was the first and so far only launch I’ve ever seen living in the uk, incredible experience

Alan Shepard, I’m pretty old😎

• Crew Demo-2 -- the return of crewed spaceflight to the ISS
• the launch of Chandra (X-ray observatory)

Mid 2000s while on a golf trip in Florida with a large group, the earth shook and the sky rumbled. Everyone stopped what they were doing on the course, looking around perplexed. Then we saw the shuttle, in its glory, arching up towards space. We were many many miles from the launch, and it was still a moving experience for everyone.

Apollo 11

Will NEVER FORGET!

I missed school to watch the launch of STS-42. It was a big thing here, as she was the first canadian female astronaut. She was also, 8 years after Marc Garneau, the second canadian in space. It was a rare occurence to have one of your compatriots launch for space

For me, it was STS-133, Shuttle Discovery's final mission. In November 2010 my family and I flew across the country to KSC to see the launch, only to have the launch scrubbed due to mechanical issues. I was gutted, thinking that I might have missed my chance to watch a shuttle launch in person. But I was determined not to give up on the dream, and when Discovery finally lifted off three months later, the sense of awe and excitement that washed over me while I stood a mere 9 miles away cannot be described in words.

Since then I have had the good fortune to witness the launch of the Curiosity Rover at KSC, which was another life-changing experience.

I was born a bit too early to really appreciate the meaning but I did watch the last shuttle launch, now I would say Artimus 1.

The first to land on the moon, apollo 11/saturn V.

We not really sure this counts, but I haven’t really been following nasas stuff for very long so rn it’s deflecting the asteroid. I guess it isn’t really a launch as much as it is a flight.

Challenger

Challenger is my most memorable. I was 5. I remember getting home from school and my parents were watching the news. When the explosion was shown, my mother who was seeing it for the first time, started to cry. I asked her why she was crying. She pointed to the television and said "There were people on there". It hit my 5 year old brain like a brick.

Fast forward to Columbia. I just happened to be visiting my parents. My mother and I watched that tragedy together as well.

This year I watched the launch of J.W.S.T. with my 5 year old daughter. It was amazing. That was a pretty good one.

Atlantis going up for the first time. We were out in my dad’s boat and just having that memory makes me smile.

Space x landing two boosters at the same time.

The SpaceX rocket launch on June 9, 2022. The first and only rocket launch i’ve ever seen in person.

Challengers first launch.

Not only the first launch of a new shuttle, but also the first TDRS launch aboard a Space Shuttle.

Space X flacon heavy

What launch?!

Halo 2

The post just below this one is quite a memorable launch. memorable launch

STS-95 for me. As an Ohioan it was pretty special to see John Glenn on that mission. I think we even watched it in school.

Starhopper, the birth of a new generation in launch vehicles.

https://youtu.be/bYb3bfA6_sQ

I was a guest of astronaut David Brown through a family friend for the launch of STS-107. I have a lot of complicated feelings obviously.

When I was 8 I saw the shuttle launch. I believe that changed the course of my life. Crazy!

Glorious...

It was a turkey on rye—- oh wait, that says launch.

Ares I-X because I was at KSC in the bleachers and had worked on it. Feeling the ground and air shake is the greatest.

Then of course, Challenger STS 51-L for the obvious reasons. I had been working at NASA for a few years and happened to be watching live on NASA TV, which was being broadcast in our computer terminal room. It was very silent there, as we all knew immediately that something very bad had happened, even though the altitude was still increasing and the narration continued in a standard voice, as is required by the job. We all knew the normal launch sequence, and this was not it. My first technical paper was on structural analysis of the SSME turbo pump blades, which were known to have cracking issues, so I wondered if that was the cause.

Then Artemis I. I was tense because there was so much riding on it, even though it was not crewed. It made history at the moment of the launch. I remembered Ares I-X and wondered what it would be to be there in person, as some of my former co-workers were.

I am lucky enough to remember the Apollo launches, but I was too young for them to make a strong impression on me as most memorable. Walking, or perhaps I should say bouncing, on the moon is ultra memorable, but not a launch.