Any time I can see the shuttle it is pretty exciting. I was in college in Utah in the fall of 95 and they were flying the shuttle over on the back of the 747 (I forget why but I'm pretty sure it stopped in Salt Lake City). Anyway, I had actually forgotten it was supposed to go over and was on my was out on a date when I looked up to the sound of a loud jet. It seemed low but that might have just been because it is so huge. It was amazing. I just had to stop and look for a minute. On a somewhat related note, the flight sim
X Plane allows you to fly the space shuttle during reentry and one of the planes I downloaded for it was a sim of the 747 carrying the shuttle. It allows you to design your own planes and work off of other designs. Somebody just put the two together and adjusted the tail some. It flies like a truck.