Space shuttle Atlantis rocketed into orbit this afternoon with six astronauts, a full load of spare parts for the International Space Station and a North Ridgeville High School grad will be at its helm.

Commander Charlie Hobaugh is leading the STS-129 mission. Hobaugh, who graduated from the school in 1980, received a degree in aerospace engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1984.

Atlantis shot into a partly cloudy afternoon sky, to the delight of about 100 Twittering space enthusiasts who won front-row seats. It was NASA’s first launch “tweetup,” and the invitees splashed news — mostly tweeting “wow” about the liftoff — over countless cell phones and computers.

“We wish you good luck, Godspeed, and we’ll see you back here just after Thanksgiving,” launch director Mike Leinbach told Hobaugh right before liftoff.

Atlantis will reach the space station Wednesday. As the shuttle blasted off, the station was soaring 220 miles above the South Pacific.

“We’re excited to take this incredible vehicle for a ride and meet up with another incredible vehicle,” Hobaugh said.

Hobaugh talked about coming from North Ridgeville in a preflight interview on the NASA Web site.

Asked about the place he grew up and how it influenced who he became, he said:

That’s probably the hardest question anybody ever asked me is where my hometown is, where I would consider home. My father was in the Coast Guard. We moved around. It used to be every two years until we started getting settled into some more, he had two-year to three-year rotations. … High School, I spent it in North Ridgeville, right outside of Cleveland, Ohio, and so prior to getting into college, which was the Naval Academy and that was probably the last place I could call home before moving all on my own. So North Ridgeville was a great place. It was right outside a big city but kind of a smaller town, smaller school, great teachers, fantastic academics, really, I had some really good math and science teachers there that made me want to stay in a technical type of field and one of the things that really influenced me to join the Marine Corps and become a Harrier pilot was going to the Cleveland National Air Races, what it was at the time, and watching air shows there and having the memorable thought of seeing a Harrier demo a couple years in a row which, in the end, ended up being my first Squadron CO that did that show that I worked with later, so that influenced me from the outset.

Hobaugh answered questions about space for North Ridgeville students at a school assembly in 2007.

Q: What was it like in space?
A: “Unbelievable. From up there, you see a sunrise and sunset every 90 minutes.

Q: Why do we even spend the time and the money to go into space in the first place?
A: There is so much research being done up there that is benefiting medical advances on Earth.

Q: What was the point of the trip?
A: The point of the trip was to increase the power capabilities of a space station that 19 countries share.

Q: What did you eat?
A: Food is mainly dehydrated food.

Q: How did you sleep?
A: You sleep where and how you can.

Q: How did you shower?
A: Showering - you don’t.

Q: How did you use the bathroom?
A: We use the bathroom sort of the same way you do, but it’s more like a high-tech outhouse. But the next rain shower you have, you might want to look up and wonder what’s coming down.

Read Tuesday’s Chronicle for more on Hobaugh and the shuttle launch.

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