Shuttle wrap

I found myself in Florida with Luz and Allison on the day of the last shuttle launch. I have heard from many coworkers who have covered shuttle launches how powerful of an experience it is. I was assigned to go to one a few years ago but that assignment was changed and a different crew went. I had always thought I would eventually get another one but that never happened and this one last Friday was scheduled to be the last shuttle launch, ever.

So I definitely wanted to go. But I also thought Luz would a) enjoy it and b) appreciate it later because it was an historic event.

It wasn't an easy sell though because while we were in Florida on a beach trip with family, we were on the other side of Florida so it did involve a long drive in the dead middle of the night. That, and the chance of the launch actually happening was rated 30%. We know though, that I am not very hassle averse, and am very history positive. I decided to check the status at 1:30AM which was the last announcement NASA would make before I would have to be driving to make it there. At 2:00AM the NASA website said they were continuing and starting fueling. So we packed up and left.

Allison and I were keeping it a surprise from Luz, only telling her we were "going to see something special". Since there was only a 30% chance of launch we didn't want to build it up too much. In fact, the scrub plan was that we would go to Disneyworld in Orlando and act like that was the "special thing" all along.

But it was still scheduled to launch as we got to Titusville and the weather appeared good to the eye. There were massive crowds of people which has the effect of convincing Luz that she is in a cool place. We had time to park, eat at a very busy Burger King and use some very busy porto-potties (I took Luz in, not a good experience, there was no paper so we did a kind of hammock thing were I held her over the hole). Then we wandered around looking for a spot to watch from. I had a bag with a couple cameras but in the end I didn't really have the space to set them all up.

As we walked, we explained to Luz that we were going to see a real spaceship take off, with real people on it and that they were representing the USA and that the ship had a name, and it was Atlantis. We also told her that it was important because it was the last time we would ever launch this kind of spaceship. She seemed pretty psyched, probably egged on by the buzzing crowd. We settled on a space of bog on the bank of the Indian River near (in?) Space View Park. It was only mildly crowded, probably due to the quasi solid black mud that served as the "ground". But we did have a clear view of the Kennedy Space Center so all was good. We only had around a half hour of a wait and then a guy with a TV started yelling updates.

After the guy yelled out a minute warning I grabbed Luz, put her on my shoulder and pointed to where the shuttle would launch from. We started a countdown but the yelling guy announced there would be a two minute delay. This seemed weird to me and I was worried because they never revised the 30% "good weather" prediction so I thought maybe they'd announce a bunch of short delays and then scrub it. But two minutes later we did another countdown and I convinced myself I could see smoke staring to billow out. After we got to zero, there was a bright flash and it slowly started to move up.

STS 135 via a Gopro in Titusville from Wes Little on Vimeo.

The shuttle climbed and the crowd cheered and Luz pumped her fist. There was cloud cover so the shuttle eventually punched the clouds rather than slowly disappearing into the sky. It was gone before the sound reached us, a giant familiar roar that sounded just like a rocket but a long time after you saw it take off. After staring at the smoke trail for a minute or two we joined the mass exodus. It is a spectacular sight, but it is also over pretty quickly.

In this shot you can just barely see the smoke trail in the lower left.

3...2...1... from Wes Little on Vimeo.

Souvenirs were procured, Luz got a little shuttle (unfortunately it's Columbia but we'll worry about that later) that she has played with ever since. She seemed very impressed by the countdown so mostly the shuttle counts down and takes off over and over, but also occasionally goes to the moon, and does some commercial flights to "Africa" and "India".

Traffic was very slow to get off the main streets of Titusville but by the time we got to Interstate 95 it really wasn't that bad. We decided to stay in St. Augustine Florida and drive back the next day (arriving a short time before my shift was to start.)

Of course if I was really trying to take her to an historic event event in Florida last week I guess I would have taken her to the Orange County Courthouse on July 5th...