As Florida Today puts it, "scads of visitors to the Space Coast have traveled from hundreds, even thousands, of miles away to see the historic final launch." And the newspaper writes that "many of the visitors have their own special reasons for being here."
The mission is getting plenty of attention on the Web as well, including from the folks at the Space Center who are participating in the #NASATweetup on Twitter.
There are also, NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce reported on Morning Edition, many more reporters on hand than there were at other launches in recent years.
Stormy weather may still force a postponement to Saturday, but NASA TV just said that the space agency's meteorologists believe "we do have a shot at this today." We'll keep an eye on what's happening and update this post as the story develops.
As you hopefully can see (our apologies to some mobile users if they can't), we've also embedded NASA TV's coverage.
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