Space Flight Awareness: Witnessing the Launch

It all started on June 8th, 2011 with an email from my good friend Tom Wagner (we met as students at the Clarion East Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop in 2001).

You have interest in attending the final shuttle launch as a VIP?” he asked. “No guarantees, but I get to nominate people and the deadline is today.” Tom is a NASA Cryosphere program scientist. He’s quite a personality, too. See him here to get what I mean. Tom is also the one who gave me an encouraging enthusiastic shove when he saw me leaning toward writing African-based science fiction.

Getting invited by NASA as a VIP guest was a long shot, plus it would disrupt my schedule, but I said “Sure!” and sent him my bio. Then I proceeded to forget about the whole thing. Two weeks later, an invitation from NASA arrived in the mail. Suddenly, I had an important decision to make.

This was the final Space Shuttle launch for NASA, ending three decades of crewed flight into Earth’s orbit. Sadly, the program is being retired (that’s another discussion for another day). It was a chance to see an exercise in American technological greatness. Space travel. My daughter could witness space travel. She’d love it!

I’ve always had a hard time writing about space. I am very much an earthling. I don’t see myself ever leaving this planet while I am alive (I may be more adventurous after I die, heh). There is so much yet to discover (and fix) on earth, why look elsewhere? And my spiritual beliefs and the systems of magic I’m attracted to are earth-based, born and rooted deep in the soil. They are not in the “heavens”. Also, when I write about something, I have to get and feel close to the subject. I never feel close to “space”, no matter how much research I do. Maybe if I see the Space Shuttle launch this will change, I thought.


The launch of the STS-135: Atlantis Space Shuttle was scheduled for 11:26 am EDT on July 8th from Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Just outside of Orlando. Orlando? I thought. Home of Disneyworld and lots of frogs, manatees, alligators and dolphins?


I decided to go.


Days before the launch date, the forecast looked dismal. It predicted rain and thunderstorms for the next ten days! A rain-free, storm-free zone is needed for 23 miles around the launch site, among other things, for Atlantis to take off.


Anya and I at Midway Airport 

When Anya and I arrived in Orlando, it was raining aggressively. After an annoying setback (our rental car died on us 10 minutes outside the airport... unbelievable), we made it to our hotel room by 10pm. The forecast was still bad and I was sure the launch would be delayed. An update would be given at 1:30am but I was too tired to stay up. I decided to check on things at 5am (we were about an hour away from the space center).


For some reason, I woke at 3am. I called the NASA VIP hotline. The woman who answered said that so far things were still on schedule. I asked her when she thought we should head to the space center. She considered it for a moment and then said, “Probably in about fifteen minutes.” Did I mention it was 3am? I dragged Anya out of bed and we were on the road by 3:30 am.


I was using a GPS for the first time in my LIFE (yep, never used one before) and I still didn’t quite know how to use it. Nevertheless, I took the chance and relied on that tiny clever gadget to get us where we needed to go. It was dark. Aside from being stuck on one the night before, I knew nothing about Florida's roads (last time I’d been in Florida was when I was 8). But we had a full tank of gas, a rental car that worked, some Pringles and a chatty navigation device.

Stuck in traffic, 4 mi. from the space center
The first 45 minutes of the hour long drive to the Kennedy Space Center were smooth sailing. Then 6 miles from our destination (according the GPS), we hit serious traffic. We were stuck there for 3 hours. No bathroom. Nowhere to turn. The space center is on a stretch of land that is forest, swamp and a lagoon. If we opened the windows, mosquitoes attacked.

Made it!
The traffic was due to the influx of people and a thorough security check point. Once we got past that, we sped on to the Space Center’s visitor headquarters and parked. It was daylight by this time. As soon as Anya got out, she looked down, grinned and caught a frog the size of a thumbnail. Frogs are always a good omen.

It's a 'gator!
On our walk to the Space Center visitor headquarters, we spotted an alligator looking at us from a creek and some birds Anya came to call “spread-leg birds” because of the comical way they walked. We took a bus to the VIP viewing site at Banana Creek. We were two hours early. In the distance, over the water, there it was: the Space Shuttle at Pad 39A (with its rocket boosters, external tank, etc). And of course, there was a large countdown clock in front of the bleachers.

The grasshopper.
After one and half hours of sitting in the sun, hearing officials say wonderful things about the Space Shuttle Program and NASA, catching a lovely grasshopper, dealing with Anya’s restlessness, and fighting drowsiness, the 30-minute countdown began. T-30 minutes to take-off. It was miraculous; the thick clouds dissipated and rain had stopped.

Waiting.
It started to dawn on me that the space shuttle might actually take off. We were going to be there to witness history. There was festivity in the air as it seemed to dawn on the people around us, too. Every time the clock stopped for whatever reason, we all held our breath. When it restarted, we applauded.

Anya had her trusty kid binoculars. I focused on the launch pad 3 miles away and the hustle and bustle that must have been going on to make it all happen. Scientists, astronauts, technicians, etc were all doing a million different important things, some great, some minute, all knowing that the earthly goddess known as Mother Nature could foil their plans at any moment, if she so chose. There is a lesson in that.

It was two minutes to take off. I had two cameras. One to take pictures, one to video. But I wanted to see it with my own eyes. And because I have sensitive ears and noise often feels tangible to me, I was afraid I was going to drop both of them when the shuttle launched. Anya wasn’t interested in taking pictures, either.

10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1! Blast off.