STS-134: what I saw from the causeway.
Somewhere it has been said that a shuttle launch is the world's biggest tailgate party for the world's shortest event. Indeed, for STS-134, they said that it was less than half a minute (I have heard 22 seconds and 8 seconds) before the shuttle was obscured from view by the clouds. So, if you make a ratio (and what engineer doesn't) of the time spent getting here to the time spent in the experience, well, let me do the math. Three round trip tickets, six nights of hotel stays, eight days worth of car rentals, at least five tanks of gas. Well, it wasn't cheap, nor was it easy. The final bill goes well over two weeks pay.
So, what did I get for my expenditures? I saw a machine with six human beings in it leave the earth. There is only one place in the world that has seen that many people in one spacecraft, and that is Kennedy Space Center, so it is a special place. As the story would have it, my first attempt was to see STS-133, Discovery's last mission. I missed my flight and went to Washington D.C. instead. Nuts... Then, I came down for STS-134's first launch attempt. Without knowing where I would be, providence gave me a ticket to be at the Visitor Complex. I wanted to see Endeavour's first fire... no such luck from there, but the launch got scrubbed and I went home empty handed. After returning to Denver, the delay to repair the APU power supply drug on, and as they landed on a firm date, I checked my favorite airline for flights, and sure enough, there was one for cheap. I bought a ticket, thinking, "I'm not going to use this, but I want it anyway." Several days later, after several conversations with others, like my Boss and his son who saw STS-132, I purchased the return trip plane ticket. Not long after, I had a car rental reservation and a plan.
The final decision to actually come was made the day before when I checked in for my flight. The weather was favorable for two of my three launch day opportunities, and with no technical difficulties being worked, I decided to go ahead and take the plunge. Landing in San Antonio, I got a call from a Lockheed Martin employee who had a Visitor Complex parking pass for me if I wanted it. Making arrangements, I flew to Orlando excited that I would get to see the shuttle with hundreds if not thousands of people at the Visitor Complex. Landing in Orlando, I had a voice mail from the CEO of the company I work for asking me if I was interested in going with him to the causeway. So, I drove from Orlando to Merritt Island super excited that I would be able to see the Shuttle on the pad. As I drove past KSC that night, I saw the VAB and the eerie glow of Xenon lights pouring into the sky. I knew they were shining on the shuttle as it was being fueled, even though I was unable to see the shuttle itself. Finally stopping at Wal-Mart in Merritt Island, I found an empty corner of the parking lot and fell asleep.
Waking up at 3:45 AM Denver time, I did as much as I could to get ready for the day after sleeping in the rental car. After going into wal-mart to buy a banana and use the bathroom, I went to rendezvous with the boss man and ride with him to the place of our viewing. Showing up about 90 minutes before blastoff, we walked part of the way down the causeway (NASA PKWY E), seeing only the top half of the shuttle. After a quick jaunt down the rest of the causeway (east), I discovered that seeing the shuttle and the launch pad was a possibility, and the four of us went the rest of the way down the causeway. Once there, we took turns with my telescope and binoculars looking at the shuttle. We were positioned almost directly south of the Shuttle Stack, which meant that the Orbiter's rudder was pointed directly at us and we were looking at the stack such that we could see the top of the wings straight on. With the telescope, I could make out all kinds of details beyond just seeing the External Tank (ET) Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) and Endeavour itself. I could see the Ground Umbilical Carrier Assembly (GUCA) that vents gaseous Hydrogen away from the ET, the Rotating Orbiter Access Arm which is what the astronauts went through to get into the shuttle and the beanie cap that the gaseous Oxygen leaves through. I could clearly see the Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSMEs) and NASA logo on the left wing. I could go on for pages with the stuff I saw and could name as it sat there, but you get the idea.
As the countdown progressed, the clouds loomed overhead with the angry promise of blocking my view as the shuttle rose. There were gaps in the clouds, but the timing didn't feel right, and none in the group felt it too promising that we would be able to see much. As the loudspeakers behind us informed us of the start of the terminal count, I called a very dear friend (you know who you are) and started to give live commentary on what I was seeing. After the orbiter access arm and beanie cap retracted, the shuttle had nothing in its way before pushing skyward. I can't even begin to describe the time between T-60 seconds and T-15 seconds. They were the longest 45 seconds I have experienced in a long time, but at T-15, even though I couldn't see it, I knew water was going into the sound suppression system. My binoculars hit my face since I knew that I wanted to see it 7x bigger. At T-10 seconds, I saw a brilliant white light under the orbiter's engines. It was the sparkers that burn off excess hydrogen, and it had all the telltale signs of being magnesium. At T-6 seconds, I saw the reddish flash of the SSMEs coming to life and immediately a cloud of steam started expanding toward us. As the cloud expanded, I heard the count go down from 6 to 0 and FLASH. Suddenly, the vehicle started going up like i have seen in all the videos. Unlike the videos, my eyes cried out in pain as if looking at the surface of the sun. Every optical magnification device (telescopes, binoculars, etc..) that I have ever seen has had the warning "Don't Look at the Sun" clearly written somewhere, and now I know why. It hurts... A lot... Fortunately, my blindness was only temporary as I switched from binoculars to the naked eye. I was so distracted by how bright the launch was that I failed to notice the roll program as the intensely bright flame passed through the cloud ceiling. Now, Mike Moses apologized to all the spectators for launching with such a low cloud ceiling. Such was not my experience at all! After the painfully bright view, passing into the clouds was the act of mercy that allowed me to use my binoculars again. Then, the rumble of the blastoff finally got to us and I felt it, though not as intensely as I was expecting. I later realized that the cloud of steam directly in our path probably muffled the engine noise a fair bit. Anyway, the noise blocked out the call I was eagerly anticipating, "Endeavour, GO at throttle up". I thought of challenger just the same as the SRBs continued to visibly burn through the cloud. At T+2 minutes, the sound had died down, and I heard the call, "SRB sep" (solid rocket booster separation) telling me that things had separated. At this point, I could see three distinct white points of light and off to the left, a periodic flash that said to me, "I'm the right SRB!" I watched in vein for the left SRB, but never saw it. Anyway, I continued to track these three points of light to the point where they were one point of light and at T+4 minutes, the faint light passed behind a cloud and my viewing experience was over.
At this point, walking back to the car, I asked myself, "ok, that was awesome, now why was this so important to me?" There has to be a reason why I did this. There has to be a question this answers or something that it reveals, otherwise it was a big waste of time and money. In thinking about it, I also pondered my specific decision to not bring a camera. I wanted an experience of the shuttle that was immediate, that is to say, not mediated by film or pixels. I wanted to be in a place where not only could I see the shuttle, but I knew that if the shuttle could look, the shuttle would be able to see me. I wanted to be able to be an old man some day and say, "the shuttle was real, I know because I saw it with my own eyes, and it was AWESOME!" For a perceptive audience, nothing is as compelling as personal testimony. 1 John 1:1 would be an unnecessary verse if the author didn't agree with me on this.
There is more - a whole lot more - but that is still to come. For short, there is a necessary harmony between knowledge and wonder. Knowledge without wonder is a dead pursuit of facts without meaning, and wonder that fails to seek knowledge is a sad combination of confusion and despair.