My first launch
It finally happened. On August 23, 2003, the mission I've been working on for the last five years launched from Cape Canaveral. As I write, the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) is careening through space, already many times farther away than the moon. The observatory is behaving beautifully, and it was an amazing experience to watch five years of my personal blood, sweat, and tears raised up on a 10-story high roman candle and blasted into space.
This has to be the most dramatic thing about working for NASA. For a week or so (depending on the Florida weather and any last-minute engineering tests) everyone gathers in Cocoa Beach, drives over to Kennedy Space Center for press conferences and web-casts each day, and (in the case of a night launch), tries to catch a quick afternoon nap. The week is guaranteed to be a roller-coaster of emotion, as everyone rides the cycles of elation (the launch is on!), disappointment (launch delay!), and anxiety (those thunderstorm clouds aren't heading this way, are they?). And since not everyone gets to attend a launch, I thought I would try to describe the experience.
For beginners, I have to say that I was rather charmed by Cocoa Beach, the town where most visitors to Kennedy Space Center (KSC) stay. It was a lovely coincidence that the in-flight movie on the way to Florida was "Down with Love," a movie set in the in the early 1960's where a character played by Ewan MacGregor impersonates an astronaut to gain the admiration of the character played by Renee Zellweger. It was fun to hear the jokes about all those "wild Cocoa Beach astronaut parties," as well as remember the mod-ish glamour that NASA had back then. In reality, Cocoa Beach is just the usual collection of shopping malls and fast food restaurants, sprawling out along a sand spit, but you can still find little Italian restaurant dives with candles in old wine bottles and signed pictures of astronauts behind the hostess desk.
KSC is a quick drive up the Florida lowlands from Cocoa Beach, and my first impression was just how huge a place it is. I promptly got lost and ended up driving around for about 20 miles (no kidding!) until I found the badging center. Like the nearby Disney World Resort, KSC is mostly undeveloped land, and it's quite a challenge to find the major buildings, let alone the deserted old launch sites that pepper the coast.
Most of the site is closed to the visiting public, and I, of course, was getting a thrill out of showing my badge to whichever gate guards I ran across. My assignment that day was to show up at the press center and take part in a web-cast, answering questions from the public about our soon-to-be-launched space telescope.
The press building is a wonderful place to contemplate America's space history, as it's located just behind the old grand-stand seating that overlooks the largest launch sites. I remembered pictures of President and Lady Bird Johnson watching the Saturn V rocket take off to the moon from those seats, and even though the launch pads and gantries are about three miles away from the stands, they are still a wonderful sight.
Of course, there can't help but be a bit of a bittersweet feeling to hanging around that place. Today the launch pads are empty. The space shuttle is still grounded after the Columbia accident, and we may never live to see the likes of a Saturn V again. Adding to that feeling, most of Kennedy Space Center has a weedy, overgrown look to it. Old launch sites have been left to crumble in the humid Florida air, and the even the plaque that marked this place as having been the site of the largest gathering of reporters and media people in history, was getting a bit rusty.
