That would have been cool to see!
My wife and I were driving through Florida one day. From the Disney area, straight east to the coast, then down towards Miami. As we neared the coast, we saw cars parked all over the sides of the roads. I asked a guy what was going on. He said a space shuttle was going to launch in about 5 minutes! So we got out, looked in the same direction as everyone else, and then we see this BRIGHT GLOW behind some palm trees about 3 miles away and a whole bunch of white smoke! Then up goes the darn space shuttle!

WOW!!
15 seconds later, the sound hits us! You could feel it in your chest, even at 3 miles. Very cool! Hung around for 5 minutes, then got back in our car and left.
Many years later, we were at Disney with our kids. We walk out of It's a Small World, into the bright sunlight, look up, and there goes another space shuttle, but much farther away. WOW again. Couldn't hear it at Disney, but you could see the smoke and fire from the engines.
So we got to see them launch twice, and both were unplanned, and just a matter of being in the right place at the right time.