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.
shoulda been watching in the earliest days when a capsule dropped and a parachute landed you.....that was hairy
the landings are super cool
Conditioning. Back in '67 we watched 'em burn up on the launch pad. (Apollo 1)
There are always going to be risks when you try to propel human bodies up into space at a gazillion miles per hour.
How do we sit through it?
Lemme tell ya, SEND ME NEXT!!!!
Is it dangerous, yeah, Fer cripes sake, they sit in a vessel lashed to a ‘Controlled Explosion’. Having said that, ‘SEND ME NEXT!!!’
Not a one of the astronauts is dragged kicking and screaming into the Shuttle. Remember, the Shuttle with the damaged wing, flew, coming APART, the crew never knew. It isn’t ‘Clunky’. Not ‘Outdated’. It is my view it is a solid piece of engineering.
As with computers, when a design is finalized, it is ‘obsolete’. Give credit to those able to fly. I wish I were one.
I’m twenty years older than you and when I was in grade school we got let out of class to gather around a small black and white TV in the school library and watch the launches.
The landings at sea and naval recoveries were also quite something.
>>>>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,
We are masters of self medication...I remember the Murcury Missions...had the entire countrty on pins and needles....
I’m 67, after awhile you get used to people dying.
To this day I don't ever, ever feel bad for someone who dies living their dream. "I'd rather live one day a tiger, than a hundred years a sheep."
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.
You don’t remember the old Apollo splashdowns. Much more nerve wracking. After splashdown, they had to send frogmen to the capsule and open it, and only after every one emerged alive could you take a deep breath.
Good question Severa! I'll never forget watching the television during Apollo 12, when they televised the take-off from the moon.
You know what really amazes me about NASA and the space program? We made it safely to the moon and back several times primarily using slide rulers instead of computers!
A long string of successes made manned spaceflight seem so safe and commonplace that we got bored with it and stopped watching altogether. Since the founding days of the Mercury program, we'd never lost a man in flight, only on the pad, so if we made it past liftoff, we felt our boys were safe.
Challenger was IIRC the first time we'd ever lost an astronaut after takeoff, and look how many years (and missions) passed between it and Columbia. The problem we have IMO is that we're still flying the same fleet of craft, which are now 20 years older, and sooner or later the odds will catch up with us again.
Prayer and faith. And then sit back and enjoy the ride....no use fretting.