Shuttle Launch

Even though this happened last month, I wanted to blog about some personal work.  Yes, I get to do that occasionally even when it’s sneaked in between working jobs!  I went to Florida back in March and we decided to stay up late one night to watch the NASA shuttle launch.  Night launches are particularly spectaclar however, the general public is only allowed to view the launch from about 5 miles away in the town of Titusville, FL.  Despite being so far away, the lights of the launch pad can be seen lighting up the entire skyline of the “space coast”.  The bright orange building to the right is the Vehicle Assembly Building – a structure so large it has it’s own weather conditions inside!

The launch was scheduled for 2:30 a.m. on the morning of March 11.  We found a great spot just outside of the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and I was just shocked at the tons and tons of people lined up to watch the launch.  We weren’t sure how many folks would show up but obviously there is still a lot of facination with the shuttle launch and there aren’t too many launches left.  Apparently, NASA will be using a new method of getting the shuttle out of the atomosphere by dropping it from a high-flying jet.  And, it’s a safer option, too.  One of the reasons there are so few night launches now is that they want to be able to watch and capture images of any debris that may be falling off the shuttle during the launch and potentially causing damage that is difficult or impossible to repair in orbit.  Night launches make this observation a little more challenging.

About an hour before the countdown an low cloud shelf settled in above us…I wasn’t sure what the launch would look like then.  All the launches I’d ever seen had been in nearly cloudless conditions!  So, we all speculated what we’d see and what it would look like.

 

I was blown away!  It was amazing but dissappointing that once it went up into the clouds, you could no longer see the orbiter or the fuel tanks being dropped.  Nothing, nada, zilch.  BUT I loved the image of the contrail going up into the clouds like the finger of God.  Very, very “Close Encounters” looking to me.  The clouds also provided this enormous bounce effect and the take off was much brighter than I remember from my last night launch I watched in 2002.  Lit up the whole world by bouncing that light back down even if only for a few moments.

And as always, I love watching the contrail and the launch pad sorta sizzle and glow afterwards…really cool light show for about thirty minutes after the shuttle is long gone.

I’ll post my St.Augustine images that I got on the way home soon!