And the Rocket Takes Flight

The space shuttle was scheduled to leave at 2:01pm East Coast time. The information I gathered suggested to arrive an hour early, but I left my hotel in time to get to Space View Park (The closest a person can get without a press pass, tickets, or a boat) by noon. I got to the area and was following the directions for a back way to get to the park that I found online, unfortunately it appeared as if I wasn't the only one with these same directions, so I turned off the route and found a nearby place to park. As I was walking toward the park, I found a field near the water that was nearly half full of people sitting in chairs waiting already. This was NOT Space View park, but it was close and it was filling up, I was worried that if I went to Space View park it would already be very full and then by the time I got back to this spot it would already be full itself, so I settled in under the shade of my folding chair with a built in canopy, for whitey white people like me.

There were lots of people with Big fancy camera's with 300x and above zooms. My camera has a 3x zoom, a drastic difference. I sat there and read and ate some Subway I had picked up while people filed in. The day was perfect, sunny and warm. There was some confusion amongst people as to which was the actual tower to watch. There are currently three towers, two had shuttles in them and there was a third tower that was blinking. The blinking tower is currently under construction. The other two towers both had shuttles in them because if the shuttle that takes off today had any problems, the other shuttle will have to quickly launch to rescue the people aboard the first shuttle. I believe they will run out of oxygen in around 20 days if they are unable to make it back to earth in time.

Several people had radios on broadcasting the announcement of the launch countdown. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and then there was an immense light from where the shuttle was, actually 2 lights right next to one another. There was not a sound, just the rising light from the engines and the white smoke following. People were pointing and snapping pictures like crazy. The shuttle kept going up, up, up and then it was gone. Then after that, it must have been 30-60 seconds, the sound hit us "grumble grumble grumble" That was pretty exciting to see the difference in speed between light and sound, it's not often that evident. Then the Nasa announcer proclaimed that the shuttle had disengaged the fuel canister (the most dangerous part) and was free and clear and everyone cheered. Then it was over, two hours of waiting and its over in less than a minute. It was very exciting and worth it though.

From what I have read since then, the astrounats are currently inspecting their shuttle for damage and have found none, a good sign.

After that I headed down to Fort Lauderdale, where I have a friend Yvonne who is working during the summer and has nicely offered to let me spend a few days on her couch enjoying the beach. She is from Germany and is here working for a boat company that helps out German students get jobs in america. There are currently three student/employees living in the fully furnished house.

Off to the beach now for me!


All the people in this one random spot

Fancy Cameras

Launch

Higher

Higher


Oww, Ahh


And its gone


BOOM!