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Logan • At 9:29 a.m., flames roared from beneath the shuttle Atlantis to rocket it to the heavens for the last time.
At Utah State University, students, faculty and community members gathered in the physics building to watch the historic moment.
For students of the school that has launched the most experiments into space, the final launch of their generation's spaceship was bittersweet.
"To see the end of NASA's manned space flight is sad, but it opens a lot of doors for the private industry," said Charles Sim, a senior in physics. "I've always wanted to go to space, and to see this end feels like the end of my opportunity. But I know in my lifetime I'll see privatized spaceflight."
As Sim and others watched the launch countdown on a projector screen, they munched on bananas and chocolate muffins. Two students played a game of Space Chess, with astronauts as pawns and the king and queen represented by a Sun and Earth.
Richele Gudmunson brought her son and four daughters, ranging in age from 2 to 10, "to be part of history."
"It's a little sad to watch," she said. "I'm just curious to see what they will come up with next."
At the Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake City, 300 people rose to their feet, applauding and raising their arms in celebration as Altantis rendezvoused with history.
The excitement, though, was tinged with nostalgia.
"I can remember as a kid watching the first launch on a black and white TV at my family's cabin and then being in elementary school and watching it land," said Justin Davenport of Salt Lake City, who grew misty-eyed at the recollection.
Davenport, 40, said he followed every shuttle flight over the years and will miss the excitement and promise that went along with the human exploration of space.
"I only hope they soon will have something to replace it — that we will be able to go on and explore asteroids, get back to the moon and move on to Mars."
Melinda Dutton, an aerospace engineer from Alliant Techsystems, the company whose aerospace systems group produced the twin solid-fuel booster motors that helped lift Atlantis into orbit, watched the moment with an eye to the uncertain future.
Dutton, who joined ATK eight years ago, said it is exciting to look forward to the new and different systems and projects that the future holds — possibly the so-called Ares heavy-lift vehicle and the privately funded Liberty rocket. "But it's also bittersweet knowing they haven't been developed yet."
Clouds threatened to delay the shuttle launch, but at the last moment, the clouds parted enough to allow NASA officials to bend their rules to allow the shuttle to safely make its way to the International Space Station, where crew members will dock Sunday morning to deliver parts and perform other duties during a 12-day mission.
One of those duties is to perform several experiments, and Ryan Martineau, a USU junior in mechanical and aerospace engineering, is excited to see those results.
"I'm excited to see it go up for the last time," Martineau said. "I'm sure I'll be sad when it lands, but for now I'm excited to see it make its way to finish its last mission."
Former astronaut and Utah Sen. Jake Garn watched the launch from his home and said his wife pointed out that he had grown a little teary-eyed as the Atlantis lifted off.
"How could I have not watched the liftoff ?," Garn said. "It has been 26 years since I flew on the shuttle and orbited the earth 110 times. I can still remember every minute of it, and watching Atlantis take off almost felt as if I was there."
For those who were there, the experience was both indescribable and elating.
Paul Gadd, the only Utahn chosen to participate in the official NASA Tweetup through social medial networking site Twitter, had never seen a launch before and didn't know what to expect.
"It completely surpassed anything I thought would happen," he said, saying he felt the physical force of the shockwaves of the liftoff.
USU graduate Terry Thomas, who participated in the first student team to send an experiment on the space shuttle in the 1980s, now works for Boeing and watched the launch from the VIP area in the Saturn V building with his two children, ages 7 and 9. He said it was a "very proud day for NASA and the contractors."
He worried he had oversold the event to his children, showing them video of previous launches and explaining the step-by-step processes that take place during the several-hour countdown. But his fears proved unfounded.
"I was so pleased to be able to share it with them," Thomas said.
But many say it's unfortunate children won't get to have such an experience for at least the next several years.
Garn is one, lamenting that the space shuttle program is ending without a shuttle replacement.
"It doesn't make sense to me that we're going to have to pay the Russians $50 million to $55 million to take our astronauts up."
Nate Inkley, a senior in mechanical and aerospace engineering at USU, thinks the shuttle should be retired, and is grateful the Russian Federal Space Agency is willing to cooperate with NASA to continue to send Americans into space. He's also looking forward to seeing what comes next.
"This is an exciting era of dramatic cost reductions," he said. "Assuming private industry can take on the mantle of launching space vehicles into orbit, NASA can get beyond low-Earth orbit, where we've been stuck for 30 years."
When the shuttle program was first launched, NASA had said they would launch 50 missions a year at an affordable price. But the shuttle never flew more than nine mission in a year, and the total tab was $196 billion, or $1.45 billion for each of its 135 flights.
Without the shuttle, though, the International Space Station would have never been built and the Hubble telescope's famously blurry vision would not have been corrected. The successes came with a price: 14 astronauts died in two shuttle explosions.
Changes to the shuttle program came after the 1986 liftoff explosion of Challenger due to a faulty fuel tank seal, and again after the 2003 Columbia explosion caused by a piece of falling foam. It broke up on re-entry.
After the Columbia disaster, NASA has been meticulous in checking for any damage to the shuttle sustained during takeoff. Since there is no other shuttle to serve as a lifeboat for Atlantis, only four of the usual seven crew members boarded. If the shuttle is damaged, the space station can handle four surprise guests long enough for the smaller Russian Soyuz capsules to perform a series of back-to-back rescue missions.
After a hiccup — officials had to visually confirm equipment had cleared the pad at the 31-second mark — the launch went smoothly. As the shuttle climbed, the reusable booster rockets made in Utah at ATK fell away to splash down in the ocean for the final time. The shuttle's orbiter separated from the orange external fuel tank, floating gracefully out of the camera's view as it started its orbit at 17,500 miles per hour.
Retired ski shop owner Hank Kaufmann, now living in Park City, watched the launch at the planetarium. He said he, too, felt sadness the program was ending.
"Looking back, you can say this about the space shuttle program, though. It did its job."
Tribune reporter Kim McDaniel and The Associated Press contributed to this article.
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