Florida 2009 – Shuttle Launch

I couldn't believe my luck when I heard that the latest Shuttle launch had been delayed and the new date placed it on the first day of my holiday in Orlando, Florida (Sat 11^thJuly) What a great opportunity to see a once in a lifetime event with my son and a chance to spend some quality time with him geeking out. When the day came I avidly scanned the NASA site for news. The weather in Florida this time of year is very unstable, most days are rounded off with a dramatic thunder storm and lightening show, very impressive to watch but not conducive to a safe shuttle launch. Luckily for us the weather had closed in early and the launch re-scheduled to the next day (Sun 12^th) before we had gotten in the car, if truth be told I was quite pleased about this as we were feeling a little tired from the travelling etc.; that evening we made our plans to watch the launch the next day.

For a venue I had chosen a spot along the Indian River in Titusville which is about 12 miles from the launch pad but offers a clear unrestricted view of it (the land is mainly flat there); all the information I had found suggested that you should turn up at least 3 hours before hand to ensure a good parking spot and take something to eat and drink etc. When the time came we both got in the car and drove out to Titusville stopping in a 7-11 to pick up some food (in the loosest sense) in the form of M&Ms, chips (crisps in English) and some sprite; all good geek fuel. It only took about an hour and I was pleased to find the place quite empty, apparently a shuttle launch isn't big news here anymore? Anyway, we got to our spot, a nice little wooded park with picnic tables and a boardwalk nestled in between two apartment blocks and we settled in to wait for the launch.

The view of the launch pad was great, and there was plenty of entertainment to pass the time, pelicans diving into the water fetching up shiny fish, the occasional dolphin playing in the waves and to our surprise a whole flock (if that's the correct collective noun?) of Ospreys darting between the trees behind us and the river, diving and catching their prey giving us a great view (alas way too fast to photograph) We also got talking to a few of the locals, really nice people, we covered the normal accent thing, then the vacation thing eventually getting onto the science part; most of them were armed to the teeth with "gear", radios, laptops, cameras with unfeasibly long lenses and lots and lots of food, they were really generous with all of it, letting us look through their cameras, read the top secret NASA blogs that they were monitoring and we listened to the commentary through various VOIP software packages, along with every flavour of Doritos imaginable.

The hours ticked down, 90, 60, 30 minutes to go, gradually a murmur of disquiet passed through the crowd, an ominous black cloud was making it's way across the peninsula headed for the pad (although the pad was still bathed in bright sunshine at this point); someone shouted out, "they've closed the hatches", we all stared intently forwards to the pad and then backwards to the cloud. 10 minutes to go, someone else shouted out "the tower has been retracted", excitement rose, then it started to rain on us.

T minus 6 minutes and the call went up, "its been scrubbed"; being a newbie to this I didn't want to ask the obvious question, we remained seated, eyes glued to the horizon. Unfortunately it was in vain, the launch had been cancelled, the thunder clouds too close to the pad and the risk of a lightening strike too great to carry on, bugger.

So close and yet so far, a great experience but a disappointment also; to rub salt into the wound the traffic on the way back to Orlando was horrendous, it took 4 hours to get back, we were exhausted. In the end we decided not to try for the rescheduled launches since it wiped out so much of the day/evening, the shuttle finally launched on Wednesday, we heard it from Orlando but couldn't see it because of low cloud. To compensate I took my son to the Kennedy Space Centre and the girls went to nearby Cocoa beach, we rode on the new shuttle launch simulator, it was cool but not as cool as the real thing…