James Allen Winningham was on hand last week as the final launch of the Atlantis Space Shuttle was held at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Above, Winningham is shown with a copy of the Huntsville Times newspaper’s commerative edition published the week of last week’s launch.

Above, a screen shot from Winningham’s video he shot from his vantage point as Atlantis left the launch pad.

The space shuttle Atlantis lifted off for the last time Friday, July 8, 2011 with more than a million people on hand to see its final voyage, while millions more paused from their daily schedules to view the televised look at the launch.

Of those one million plus people, a 10 year old boy from Clinton County was on hand to view history in the making.

James Allen Winningham, the son of Anthony and Katresa Winningham, left Clinton County almost a week before the shuttle’s lift off.

Winningham’s uncle, Bob Rains, works for NASA in Huntsville, AL, and offered to take Winningham to view the final shuttle launch of the famous spacecraft.

Rains works with the group of technicians who are responsible for the outer heat-shield layer of the space shuttle.

Winningham didn’t need much prodding during an interview this week to begin showing his excitement about having witnessed the last lift-off of Atlantis.

“It was brighter than I imagined … It was louder than I imagined … It was pretty cool,” Winningham said. “It took a little while for the sound to get to us. The ground shook, which I really didn’t think it would because we were seven miles away. I didn’t think you could feel the rumble that far away.”

“We were on like a little island on NASA’s site,” Winningham said. “I didn’t know what to think. It was bright. It really didn’t take that long for the sound to get there … just a few seconds.”

From the location where Winningham viewed the shuttle launch, he got the complete thrill of watching the final shuttle move out of sight, into outer space.

“I could see it go up and I could feel it too,” Winningham said. “There were a lot of people there. It took us two hours to go three miles. There were people on their mobile home campers sitting on top watching it.”

The space shuttle program first began in April of 1981. Since then, more than 300 astronauts have traveled to outer space.

Friday’s launch of Atlantis is the 32nd flight for the space craft since its creation in October of 1985. Atlantis has orbited the earth more than 4,600 times and has to travel 17,500 miles per hour in order to orbit the earth.

Since 1985, Atlantis has traveled more than 120 million miles in space.

Friday’s launch was performed on Launch Pad 39A, which was the same launch pad used for Apollo 11 in 1969 when NASA sent people to the moon.

“It’s the last one. They are not doing another one until like 2030 and I told Aunt Kay (Rains) that I may be working on the next one because I will be out of college by then,” Winningham said.

Winningham’s experience has left him with more knowledge of space travel and what NASA is all about. When asked if he wanted to be an astronaut, he said no, but he did say he wanted to work for NASA.

“No … I don’t want to do that,” Winningham said. “I would like to work on the engines.”

Other than being in Cape Canaveral, FLA. for the launch, Winningham traveled back to Huntsville after the launch and toured NASA’s space center facility.

“I went to the space center in Huntsville and got to see a real shuttle that was called Pathfinder. They (NASA) made it before any of the others,” Winningham said. “I got to see the Apollo rocket and the real capsule of the Apollo 13.”

Being only one of more than a million people who watched the launch first hand, Winningham is thankful he got the chance to view history and he realizes just how big the opportunity was.

“It was a pretty big deal because it was the last one,” Winningham said. “It was something not many people get to experience. It was fun.”

Atlantis’ mission is to transport supplies and food to the space station and will return to earth on July 20, 2011, to mark the final chapter of NASA’s 30 years of space shuttle travel.