Today my boyhood dream came true, to watch a Space Shuttle launch! The weather was nearly perfect. High whisky clouds, blue skies and fantastic visibility. The launch was scheduled for 11:38am. I had to ride for about 1 hour from Vero Beach further south. The ride was beautiful long the coast. Very calm lagoon like water, with heaps of jumping fish.
Along the way I was dropping off at petrol stations asking where was the best place to view the launch, as I knew you couldn't get very close to it, but the locals either where thick or didn't want to tell. Eventually after riding around in circles with 20mins to launch time, I pulled into a little sandwich store to buy some water, as it was damn hot and sticky. On the wall was an aerial photo of the port with the Space Shuttle taking off in the background. I asked the owner where's that and he said it’s just around the corner. The spot was perfect on the edge of the water, looking straight at the launch site. There was the Shuttle perfectly placed in front of my view. It was just a shame it was about 6 miles away. But I could still see it quite easily with my 300mm lens. There were about 100 cars parked down the road with people watching. But, no where as much as I thought there would be.
Somebody had the count down on their car radio, as NASA have their own radio and television stations in the area.
The launch was incredibly fast. At about 3 seconds you could see a little bit of smoke and exactly on 0 seconds, the Solid Fuel Rockets light and the smoke explodes all around the shuttle, hiding it from view. About 2 seconds after that, the shuttle slowly appears out the top of the smoke with this massive fireball behind it - much bigger than it appears on TV. I was quite surprised how slow the thing left the ground. At this point we still couldn't hear a thing, the sound hadn't hit us yet.
The Shuttle disappears for 3-4 seconds as it passes through some low level cloud at only about 2000 ft. The whole cloud turns red. The crowd is cheering. My chin's on the ground!
When the Shuttle appears out the other side of the cloud, now it is hammering and darting for the heavens. Still there is no sound. I was puzzled, were we going to hear anything? Then the ground started rumbling as a deep crackling sound filled the air. Now it felt real as the sound intensified. It wasn't the loudest thing I have heard, but it was loud and felt big. But considering how far away it was - it must be loud.
By now the Shuttle was screaming and just looked like a flaming match rocketing upwards to the naked eye - but I could still see it clearly through the camera. The flame of the solid fuel rockets was bright orange, but the flame from the shuttles rockets was an intense white light, exactly like a welder’s arc and hurt your eyes.
Then the Shuttle disappeared momentarily in smoke as the solid fuel rockets separated. I was very surprised to see this clearly in the camera view finder and captured a great photo. Actually you could still see the rockets with the naked eye as they separated and started to spin to the ground - but I lost sight of them and never saw any parachutes. I think the rockets do that at 2:04 after launch. Not long after that, the Shuttle is out of site, just a massive trail of smoke, snaking its way up the sky to where the booster rockets stopped.
I cannot believe how lucky I am to see Shuttle launch considering that it only launches on schedule about 15% of the time. Something I will clearly remember for the rest of my life.
I tried to finish off the day by visiting the Kennedy Space Center, but after I bought my ticket and was going through security, which was like getting on a Intl flight, I was stopped because I was carrying my GPS. The security guy says, “Didn’t you see the signs outside, they are everywhere? You have two options, lose the GPS or return it to your car”. On returning to my bike, I ask one of the ticket attendants where were the signs, she couldn’t find one. I told her what happened and said they must of packed them on the Space Shuttle!
The tickets are good for two days, so I spend the remainder of the day and tomorrow checking out NASA. In my opinion, this is must see place while in America.
Check out these pics:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jamesc71
