Launch.

Finally we launched our rocket! And it seems to be a great success. The whole night seemed to be pretty surreal, and I'd give a play by play of the events leading up to the launch, but I don't think I could accurately portray what was going on. What I can tell you is that our data looks amazing. So far we just have the strip charts with the real time data from the flight, and nothing we can play around with but it really is great stuff. We have data from all five payloads, and four out of five of my detectors worked. The one that didn't work failed because it somehow deployed too early and the high voltage came on when the rocket was still in the atmosphere, so the high voltage board fried. I am just so so happy about the results of this rocket, as is everyone on the team.

It has been almost 24 hours since the launch, and I am just now realizing that I am finally through with this stage of it, and I get to move on with life. I finally get to go home and am so happy about that I could cry.

Life's so good. (apparently the former state slogan of Wisconsin, which, just four days ago, was replaced by "Live like you mean it.")