Skyrockets for the Fourth

Discovery made it off the pad without any extra fireworks. Godspeed on their mission.

Meanwhile, the North Koreans did a little rocketry of their own, launching four missiles into the Sea of Japan. Apparently their big baby failed. Certainly not the show they intended.

There is some speculation that the first two missiles, which were short range Scuds, might have been launched to try and get a response from our anti-missile systems before they tried to launch the big one. They're going to have to be careful with those things. I don't think they'd like an "unscheduled sunrise" over their capital city.

UPDATE: Make that 6 total missiles with the big one failing about 35 seconds into the flight.