NORTH RIDGEVILLE — Roaring off its Cape Canaveral launch pad Monday afternoon in a nearly perfect liftoff, the space shuttle Atlantis embarked on an 11-day mission to the International Space Station loaded with nearly 30,000 pounds of spare parts.

Headed by 1980 North Ridgeville High School grad Commander Charlie Hobaugh, the mission also goes forth with a sense of unease over the future of the space program.

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

Track the shuttle on NASA TV:

A 1984 aerospace engineering graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, the Marine colonel is leading a six-man crew whose flight will bring to five the number of remaining shuttle missions in NASA’s nearly 30-year-old shuttle effort.

This mission is the first devoted exclusively to supplying the ISS so it can continue its work long after the shuttle scheduled 2010 retirement.

The reality of five more flights is beginning to register with the launch team, including Mike Leinbach, launch director at the Kennedy Space Center.

“It is starting to hit home, I have to admit to you,” Leinbach said. “It is starting to hit home.”

When Hobaugh spoke to students at his alma mater during a 2007 visit a few months after completing a 13-day mission aboard shuttle Endeavour to the space station, he talked about the value — and awe — of the program.

“From up there, you see a sunrise and sunset every 90 minutes,” Hobaugh told students.

He also spoke of the medical advances on Earth that have been made thanks to extensive research conducted aboard on the shuttle and space station, and the value of boosting capabilities of the ISS, which is shared by 19 nations.

Monday’s launch came amid major worries about NASA’s future. The agency has been told by the White House to consider cutting its 2011 budget by as much as 10 percent of its proposed 2009-10 budget of $18.7 billion.

Cuts of that severity would effectively end human spaceflight for at least the next decade — and probably longer, according to a 10-member presidential space panel that recommended a $3 billion annual boost for NASA in October. That sum would allow the agency to return astronauts to the space station by 2017.

NASA and the Kennedy Space Center are set to lose up to 7,000 jobs when the shuttle is retired.

But a senior administration official, who spoke anonymously, cautioned against reading too much into the proposed reductions. The official said agencies were given “global” instructions to cut their budgets by five to 10 percent to help reduce a record $1.4 trillion deficit. “When the president makes a decision on human spaceflight, he can ignore that.”

During a preflight interview posted on NASA’s Web site, Hobaugh talked about growing up in North Ridgeville. With a father who was in the Coast Guard, the family moved around a lot.

“It used to be every two years until we started getting settled into more two-year to three-year rotations,” he said.

“North Ridgeville was a great place,” Hobaugh said. “It was right outside a big city (Cleveland) but kind of a smaller town, smaller school, great teachers, fantastic academics. 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.”

Soloing in a plane before he drove a car, Hobaugh told North Ridgeville students in 2007 that there were some who tried to tell him that he would never fly the shuttle.

“But you have to face those challengers and decide what you are made of,” Hobaugh said. “Either you cave in … or you can rise to the occasion.”

Hobaugh is joined by a veteran crew that includes: mission specialist Leland Melvin, a scientist and former NFL football player; navy Captain and veteran spacewalker Michael Foreman; and first-timer Robert Satcher, an orthopedic surgeon.

The Associated Press reported today that Hobaugh could care less what he eats on Thanksgiving as long as he’s in space.

Hobaugh used his commander’s prerogative to skip the irradiated turkey and freeze-dried trimmings that NASA could have tucked away for the crew’s Thanksgiving dinner.

“The season is whatever the season is,” he said. “We’re just always pleased to be in space. I don’t care what they give us. It could be beef brisket. It could be tofu. It doesn’t matter to me. We’re going to enjoy ourselves no matter what we do.”

His was the last voice heard by the Columbia astronauts right before they died in 2003. He was speaking to them from Mission Control as they were returning to Earth; their spaceship shattered minutes before landing.

Hobaugh said he thinks often of that fateful morning and believes he’s smarter now because of it.

Hobaugh, nicknamed Scorch, flew combat during Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm in the early 1990s. He became an astronaut in 1996.

He and wife Corinna, a schoolteacher, have four children, ages 16 to 22. He was born in Bar Harbor, Maine.

Scroll down for photos of the launch.

Atlantis sails smoothly into orbit

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — With 100 Internet-savvy NASA fans cheering on the shuttle and churning out constant Twitter updates, Atlantis sailed smoothly into orbit Monday with six astronauts and a full load of spare parts for the International Space Station.

The supply run should keep the space station humming for years to come, and the shuttle astronauts in space through Thanksgiving.

Atlantis was clearly visible as it shot through thin afternoon clouds, to the delight of Twittering space enthusiasts who won front-row seats to the launch. The contest winners splashed news — mostly tweeting “wow” and “amazing” about the liftoff — over countless cell phones and computers in 140 characters or less.

“What’s exciting to me is that they’ve captured the spirit and the excitement that we all feel, and they were able to capture it in a very few number of characters,” NASA space operations chief Bill Gerstenmaier said with a chuckle. “They’re amazing, little, short statements about what they felt.”

Atlantis will reach the space station Wednesday. As the shuttle blasted off, the station was soaring 220 miles above the South Pacific. Launch director Mike Leinbach wished the astronauts good luck and said, “We’ll see you back here just after Thanksgiving.”

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

NASA wants to stockpile as many pumps, tanks, gyroscopes and other oversize equipment as possible at the space station, before the three remaining shuttles retire next fall. None of the other visiting spacecraft is big enough to carry so many large pieces.

The space agency expects to keep the space station flying until 2015, possibly 2020 if President Barack Obama gives the go-ahead.

During their 11-day flight, Hobaugh and his crew — including the first orthopedic surgeon in space, Dr. Robert Satcher Jr. — will unload the nearly 30,000 pounds of equipment and experiments. Most of the gear will be attached to the outside of the space station on storage platforms.

Three spacewalks will be conducted beginning Thursday to hook everything up and get a jump on the next shuttle flight.
The launch seemed to go perfectly. Only three small pieces of foam insulation were spotted coming off the fuel tank, and it was not a concern, said Bill Gerstenmaier, head of NASA’s space operations.

“What a great way to start this mission,” Gerstenmaier told reporters. He cautioned the flight ahead was tough and “we need to stay focused.”

While NASA officials were pleased, the Twittering invitees were downright ecstatic. They were among the first to sign up online last month for the opportunity to see a launch up close, and filed Twitter updates practically nonstop.

“The wifi and cellular networks are so bogged down with excited tweets that it is hard to get messages out,” posted Laura Burns, 33, a Columbia, Md., software systems engineer.

NASA estimates the 100 tweeters, or tweeps as they’re called, have a following of more than 150,000. The space agency sees it as a beneficial outreach program, especially as the shuttle program winds down and the future remains murky.

Obama has yet to chart a course for American astronauts, beyond the shuttle and station. A moon rocket under development is supposed to replace the shuttle, but the lunar exploration program is in jeopardy.

This is NASA’s last shuttle flight of the year and one of only six remaining. “Five to go … it’s starting to hit home, I have to admit,” Leinbach said.

If all goes as planned, Atlantis’ six spacemen will return to Earth the day after Thanksgiving, bringing home a seventh astronaut, Nicole Stott, who has been living at the space station since the end of August.

The astronauts will have to forgo the usual Thanksgiving fare. NASA did not pack any special dinners aboard Atlantis. Hobaugh, the commander, didn’t want any.

If the astronauts want poultry on Thanksgiving, they’ll have to settle for turkey tetrazzini in rehydratable pouches or thermostabilized chicken fajitas. There’s also plenty of barbecued beef brisket.

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