T Minus 3 and Counting

Last Friday we drove over to the Kennedy Space Center to watch the final launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis from the Visitors Center as it began STS-132. A friend of ours had scored two vehicle passes and eight individual tickets from NASA online, and kindly offered a car pass and two tickets to us.

Our day started early, meeting a pair of passengers at a Starbucks across the county at 7 a.m. The only way to begin an early morning road trip is with a tall cup of strong, fresh, hot 3 Region blend.

Our car pass listed an entry time of 11 a.m. for a 2:20 p.m. launch. Of course, there was conflicting information between the packet that came with the passes and two different NASA websites as to whether we would be allowed through the gate if we arrived early or late, as well as what items might or might not be allowed on the base. It turned out not to matter. After a pleasant ride over with little traffic (except briefly when the majority of people turned off the highway for the main gate where we diverted to a lesser used side gate thanks to the Google Maps traffic feature on the iPhone), and a wave through the impromptu security station whose guards looked annoyed and distracted when Karen rolled down her window, we arrived at the Visitors Center an hour early. Neither of our passengers had experienced a launch from there before.

The sky had cleared on the way over from intermittent fair-weather clouds that still might have scrubbed the launch to a near perfect and piercing azure. The sun was strong enough, the air dry enough that NASA employees were warning everyone to keep hydrated. The kind of perfect weather where not having enough water could sneak up on you quickly. Still, it wasn't as hot and humid as mid-May in Florida can get, which misled both Karen and I into being slightly complacent with our sunscreen. Fortunately, we both remembered hats and shade for our necks.

With a rough count we calculated about 3500 or so cars in the parking lot, plus buses. That translates to maybe 10k people, including those who would board the charters to view the launch from the VIP area. Neither Karen and I are much for crowds much these days, so we spent most of our day reading by a little trafficked side building in the complex. While the rest of our friends stood in various lines for 3-D IMAX movies and the Shuttle Simulator, I was enjoying spending time outside watching the green and the water with the wildlife that actually owns most of the property, alligators, turtles, hawks, turkeys, Sandhill cranes, as I read an introduction to game theory. To each their own, right?

The crowd was young, on average younger than Karen or I, mainly younger parents with their children. The people we encountered seemed to accept the crowded conditions and were in no real hurry to get anywhere. While most of the cars in the lot bore Florida plates, accents from English to German to Georgian and North Carolinian filtered through the crowd. The grounds were awash with folding chairs, blankets, soft-sided coolers, strollers, backpacks, camera bags, phones and tripods, like the flotsam and jetsam from an unseen cruise ship that might have sunk off Port Canaveral. There was a carnival atmosphere with excited children playing, barely more contained adults watching, distorted announcements coming over the loudspeakers, the scent of sunscreen mingling with the aroma of hardwood smoke, popcorn and pulled pork sandwiches, and nearly everyone clutching either brightly colored soda cups or brighter shuttle-shaped water bottles in their hands. Kind of like a county fair without the barkers, games or rides. Or maybe a laid back, outdoor summer concert, more Lilith Fair than Ozzfest.

Everyone cheered when the big screens showed the astronauts coming out of the prep area and loading into the van with that would take them to the pad, accompanied by a couple police cars and a cute little black, machine gun turreted APC. Yeah, they take that part of security pretty seriously.

As launch time approached, all the exhibits evacuated. People had staked out viewing locations early, the rise by the shuttle simulator near the entrance, the knoll and the small set of bleachers next to the jumbo-tron toward the back, the platform of the Astronaut Memorial between the two. Connecting these was a pretty much forgotten walkway by a small lake that no one claimed positions on until less than an hour before, I think many were uncertain whether the Astronaut Memorial (that looks like an old-style, flat-faced radar installation) would block their view. Once again, we had the technology, scientists and engineers to solve this problem. Bring up a very slow, overloaded Google Maps app on the iPhone, study the road patterns, remember the satellite view from the night before, drop a pin at the consensus location of Pad 39A and voila, we could see exactly where the shuttle should clear the trees, well to the correct side of the memorial. Of course, had the 3G network loaded much slower, I was ready to geek out and do some basic trigonometry to calculate the tangent of the viewing angle based on the right triangle defined by the Visitors Center, the landing facility and the launch pad that one of our number remembered with a rough idea of distances. We are geeks: we have the tools, we have the talent.

Honestly, I think we had one of the best spots at the Visitors Center. There was no one in front of us to have to peer around, and a long, clear run-up to the trees across the road from the decorative lake. But it wasn't a main thoroughfare, so I think a lot of people overlooked it as an option when they tagged their turf with chairs and blankets. The one drawback was there were no loudspeakers nearby, so we couldn't hear any of the status updates or the countdown to know whether we were on schedule for an on-time launch. By then, 3G updates had slowed to a crawl, with Internet coverage nearly completely shut down. We didn't much care. We knew the crowd would let us know if the launch had been scrubbed.

They also served as a countdown clock, providing a chanted warning as they counted off the final seconds en masse. At "ONE" we all scanned the tree line together.

Karen was the first to spot the trees catching fire as Atlantis lifted off, just slightly short of due NE, very close to where we projected it would be. Everyone stood silently watching as it ascended on a pillar of fire that faded into smoke and vapor, both the orange flame and the bright white contrail contrasted nicely against the cerulean sky, until its trajectory was almost completely obscured by the cloud it had created.

Several seconds later, the audio caught up with the visuals. It started with a low rumble like distant thunder that quickly crescendoed into a speaker rattling bass like you might hear from a teenager's overloaded car subwoofer resonating within your chest. By then, the tiny sparkle from the shuttle's exhaust was playing hide and seek between its own billowing, serpentine contrail. Karen's snapping camera shutter provided an impromptu metronome for us to judge the time since liftoff. Only when she got home did she realize she had captured a perfect shot of the solid-rocket booster separation during one of those brief glimpses.

Soon, people started drifting away, much like segments of Atlantis's vapor trail. This was the first time I'd seen a contrail disperse unevenly, along distinct transition layers. Near the ground, it held together in a puffy mass. A larger section above it dispersed as though someone had smeared it across an artist's canvas to create an impression of fog. Farther up, another piece seemed to reconstitute and hold together as though time moved differently up there. The uppermost section scattered into haze. Together, they gave us a very striking indication of the atmospheric conditions at various altitudes.

We quickly packed up our stuff and headed home, succeeding in escaping before the bulk of the traffic. Unlike us, most people were content to make a day of it, spending the rest of the afternoon wandering through exhibits while they waited for the traffic to Orlando to unknot. Here, we got tricked by our technology, opting for a more southerly route that looked clear on the iPhone when we started for it, only to update to just as locked solid once we had committed. (You said "clear." I said "looks clear." Well, how's it look now? (shrug) Looks clear). But we made up that time when traffic stopped dead in Tampa and we found a detour the bypassed the 15-20 minute backup. That felt like redemption (at least for me). Though I got the sense that others in our car were feeling a bit more competitive with the other vehicle in our party.

By the time we got home, we'd logged almost thirteen hours, nearly eight of them on the road. A long day and a lot of driving by our standards. But completely worthwhile for a great launch in superb company.

This makes the fourth shuttle launch I've watched from the KSC property, including two from different causeway locations in high school (one day launch, one night), a night launch from the VIP viewing area ten years ago and this one. That doesn't include the ones Karen and I watched from FIT or just standing outside our front door. A good variety to remember NASA's shuttle program by as it winds down. Here's hoping this isn't the last manned launch we get to see from over there in our lifetimes.

© 2010 Edward P. Morgan III