To Infinity and Beyond!

Well, maybe not infinity, but the shuttle launch here in Florida was quite an impressive site. After sunning at the beach, my programming associates (ooooo. Sounds impressive!) and I, started driving toward the launch site to see how close we could come before the launch.

We had considered stopping near the beach to watch the launch, because there was a HUGE bridge - at least... 50 feet off the ground. Although it sounds low, I'm guessing it was the highest point around for 40 miles around. We decided to bypass that and go for a closer launch site. We're driving on I-95 (at least I think we were), and there were trees as far as we could see to our left and right with no breaks and high spots. We went for 20 miles without a break in the trees or a hill in sight. Finally, we take a small right turn and see a small, arched bridge about a mile ahead of us. The bridge was 20 feet high or so at the highest point, but it was enough for that area. So we start driving towards the bridge and an announcer comes on the radio saying the launch will be in 31 seconds, and that it had already been delayed a minute. Well... we made it to the bridge in time. :-D

Just as the we heard NASA finish the countdown and say launch, we finished parking... about 3 seconds later we saw the rocket climb above the tree. We were still 20 miles away from the launch site, but the rocket was bright enough that you couldn't look at it with your bare eyes. It was like stepping out into the snow on a sunny day... It's not so bright you need to close you're eyes, but still bright enough that you need to look away until you eyes adjust.... but then there are people like me - with sunglasses! Without them, I would have missed a lot of the details.

I got to see the booster rockets get released and fall off and fall towards the earth, and I saw the secondary power boost appear, and I even got to see the shuttle turn that off and start it's thrusting rockets to oriented it towards it's destination... I'm estimating I lost sight of it about 50 miles up.... After I lost sight of it, I finally looked back at where it came out of the trees and the smoke from the fuel was firm enough and large enough that it looked like a small cumulonimbous cloud that hadn't yet developed it's anvil. :-) It was quite a trail of smoke.

It lasted under 5 minutes, but it was a cool five minutes.