CAPE CANAVERAL — Walt Johnson's office is full of space memorabilia, from signed articles from astronauts, to tokens of meetings with celebrities dropping by to see a launch.

Johnson, who works on economic development for the space coast city of Titusville, has invited me over from the tent I'm staying in outside of town. He wanted to hear about my plan to cover the Discovery shuttle launch from down in the trenches, looking on with some of the 50,000 to 100,000 other people expected to descend on public viewing areas here in the next two days.

STS-114 (or Return To Flight, which sounds much cooler) is as much a study in faith and the human spirit as it is about science and technology.

In the next few days, I'm hoping to leave a lot of the news about the mission to news folk and capture the stories - both new and old - of the people who come here to watch astronauts go off to space.

All kinds of people make the trek to Titusville for launch parties. Johnson remembers the late singer John Denver dropping by a restaurant he owned at the time to play a set in the midst of an Apollo liftoff. Another, time there, Johnson and Alan Shepard - the first American in space - ended up watching O.J. Simpson's white Bronco being chased down a California highway on TV.

Johnson is a 25-year veteran of space launch shows. He gives me a tour of the sites, from Spaceview Park (where I'm considering covering the launch) to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor's Center, to the Astronaut Walk Of Fame, to the best Cuban restaurant (El Leoncita) with a view of the Vehicle Assembly Building (which is so big, Johnson says it has its own weather.)

Johnson says he's seen everything from Apollo moon rockets to satellites, to shuttle service missions to the International Space Station go up, and he's got a story about each one. He's rubbed elbows with many of the original astronauts and lives next to the famous German Apollo mission supervisor Gunter Vent.

He's also had his share of tearjerkers, like the 1986 day when he looked up from the highway and saw the exhaust trail of Space Shuttle Challenger crack open from a single triumphant streak to an ominous Y shape. All of a sudden, he says, the radio broadcast he was following the launch on went silent. When the shaken announcer came back on the air, he noted there had been a "malfunction."

Darkest days, finest hours

Space launches are full of uncertainty and danger. When Pauline and Larry Trummel tried to attend the final launch of Columbia (which was then postponed), the two and their kids watched the launch and mission on TV from their home in California.

As she looks out over the river at Discovery, Pauline remembers "having to wake our son up one morning to tell him there wasn't going to be a landing."

The Trummels, their daughter, and their son diverted their summer vacation, traveling to Florida to see this launch.

Now that they're here, Larry says the launch will be exciting -- as if it were the very first space shuttle launch. For them, it is.

• Award-winning science journalist Peter McMahon's launch-gazer journals can be seen every day on DiscoveryChannel.ca
  
• Discovery Channel Canada will broadcast the Return To Flight launch LIVE on July 13, at 3:30 pm ET (with recaps at 7 and 11 pm ET)