Apparently they are not sending a missile to the pole but dropping one of the rocket stages on it. Resourceful, actually.

Rocket Scientist 1: Okay, we're good on the calculations for the orbiter's LIO.
Rocket Scientist 2: Good, time for lunch.
RS1: There's just one problem...
RS2: What?
RS1: We don't have enough delta-vee to get the FSB into ejection orbit.
RS2: So... ker-splat?
RS1: Ker-splat.
(long pause)
RS2: It's a feature.
RS1: It's a feature. Let's eat.

And it's off. I like to watch a launch. Saw New Horizons launch toward Pluto when we were at the Cape a few years ago. That thing did not hang around.

All this coverage makes one wonder how we ever made it to the Moon before without booster-mounted cameras relaying live video,* 3-D animations driven by live tracking data, and carefully crafted mission descriptions delivered at the moment of take-off. Just lucky, I guess.

* No, we didn't have that before. You may be thinking of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_4#Cameras .