41 - “I’m 31 years old. For those older than me...how in the HELL do you sit still through a shuttle launch and landing? After what happened with the Challenger and Columbia, I’m on f**king pins and needles every time a shuttle goes up and when it comes in for landing.”
Well, you go outside from your shop at Kennedy Space Center, where you personally worked with your mates on the shuttle, with your portable radio, stand looking hopefully at the gantry launch tower where the shuttle sits, you cross your fingers, knowing that you did your job to the best of your ability, to assure a safe and error free mission, and that your signature is proudly there among the other 1.2 million signatures and certifications which were required for this average individual launch.
Then as as the countdown gets to 10 seconds, you shade your eyes, staring at the launch pad, (trying not to blink (so you you don’t miss anything), and as the coundown reaches about 3 seconds, and the first of the 3 main engine’s exhausts is lit-up by gigantic versions of a child’s sparkler, and the huge water pumps start to pump out around 500,000 gallons of water,in 30 seconds, through giant rain-bird style (yes the pop-up lawn sprinklers) to cool the launch equipment and platform to keep them from melting and to muffle the sound waves, protecting some from accoustic shock, and you watch as the main solid boosters ignite, hitting the massive streams of water, superheating it into a large cloud of superhot white steam vapor.
Then you plant your feet firmly on the ground, awaiting the sound shockwaves to hit your body with a big thump (and the kids today think they get turned on by feeling the throb of the big bass speakers at a rock concert? - try out a NASA sound thump), and you stare intently as she starts, so slowly, to lift off the pad, you cross your other fingers and all your toes too, and quietly chant the KSC mantra -— “GO BABY, GO”, repeatedly as she rises ever more quickly into the sky.
And then you follow the flight path closely until you see the solid boosters drop off and fall into the sea, and you continue watching and chanting, until you hear those magic words “presto meco” (translation press on to main engine cutoff), as she hurries out of sight, on her high speed mission.
That’s how I and most of my fellow workers at KSC, would STAND (not sit), through each launch.
However, there are others who sit at their desks, and glance out their windows, or look at the NASA TV’s, thinking “Good. I’ll be able to keep my swimming pool and still be able to have a have a nice swim tomorrow” as they chant their mantra: “SWIMMING POOL”, “SWIMMING POOL”, “SWIMMING POOL.”
One of the nice side benefits of viewing the launch on Kennedy Space Center, is that it is a huge wildlife sancturary, and there are large flocks of many types of beautiful and large birds, especially the snowy white egrets, and on occasion, you will be positioned where you can see two launches for the price of one, our shuttle launch, and simultaneously, God’s launch of thousands of beautiful birds as they also take flight, startled by the roar of our rockets.
ping 275, one of my better posts.
Thank you for sharing that, a great read indeed.