STS-109 launch activities
Mar. 3rd, 2002 07:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jayThe launch was spectacular, lighting up the early dawn. I'll post a photo as soon as I can find a public site to place the pictures.
Coming in on Wednesday on the red-eye... my plane was an hour late, so I had to rush to the Grunsfeld farewell reception, arriving an hour late. It was different than expected... lots of relatives and kids, few NASA folks. Juice boxes and cake, not sparkling wine toasts. Not many networking opportunities, but that was OK. John was in quarantine, so couldn't attend his own sending-off party. But friends-who-organized took photos and pasted them on scrapbook pages where we wrote personal messages -- then John was given the album to look at on his way to the pad early Friday.
It was *cold* in Florida! Down to 35 Wednesday night -- they postponed the launch (i.e., Challenger-like temps.) When they went ahead the following day, I had to be at the KSC visitor center by 3am! That's, er, midnight at home... we were bussed over to the static test road site which is about four miles from the launch complex, arriving about 4:30am. Then two hours of waiting, sprawled out on blankets on the ground... for awhile it appeared that low overcast would cause another launch postponement, but the weather cleared sufficiently to proceed.
Then a flash, and a bubble-like aura appeared momentarily, radiating outward from the vehicle and pad (my photo just shows a sun-like sphere of light), fading to a piercingly bright white point lighting the entire sky, rapidly climbing through the cloud layers. After about ten seconds, we heard the ripping, popping sound of the initial launch and guttural roar. In the dusky dawn sky, we could see the vehicle well past solid rocket motor separation, almost all the way to main engine cutoff. The solids could be seen leaving dawn-lit pink parallel trails, descending to the water. And finally, the exhaust plume was glowingly lit above us by the incipient sunrise, causing it to glow peach, pink and white across the sky (another photo). Strange, but beautiful... like a human hand conspiring with nature to create a huge artwork.
Coming in on Wednesday on the red-eye... my plane was an hour late, so I had to rush to the Grunsfeld farewell reception, arriving an hour late. It was different than expected... lots of relatives and kids, few NASA folks. Juice boxes and cake, not sparkling wine toasts. Not many networking opportunities, but that was OK. John was in quarantine, so couldn't attend his own sending-off party. But friends-who-organized took photos and pasted them on scrapbook pages where we wrote personal messages -- then John was given the album to look at on his way to the pad early Friday.
It was *cold* in Florida! Down to 35 Wednesday night -- they postponed the launch (i.e., Challenger-like temps.) When they went ahead the following day, I had to be at the KSC visitor center by 3am! That's, er, midnight at home... we were bussed over to the static test road site which is about four miles from the launch complex, arriving about 4:30am. Then two hours of waiting, sprawled out on blankets on the ground... for awhile it appeared that low overcast would cause another launch postponement, but the weather cleared sufficiently to proceed.
Then a flash, and a bubble-like aura appeared momentarily, radiating outward from the vehicle and pad (my photo just shows a sun-like sphere of light), fading to a piercingly bright white point lighting the entire sky, rapidly climbing through the cloud layers. After about ten seconds, we heard the ripping, popping sound of the initial launch and guttural roar. In the dusky dawn sky, we could see the vehicle well past solid rocket motor separation, almost all the way to main engine cutoff. The solids could be seen leaving dawn-lit pink parallel trails, descending to the water. And finally, the exhaust plume was glowingly lit above us by the incipient sunrise, causing it to glow peach, pink and white across the sky (another photo). Strange, but beautiful... like a human hand conspiring with nature to create a huge artwork.
