Travel: February 2010 Archives

It's been a rough week. There were plenty of bright spots, like our dinner with Meryl and James last Saturday, birthday dinner for Becca on Tuesday, lots of Olympics on TV, and getting paid for all the work I've done on a website. But other events have left me feeling frustrated, beaten down, and tired. I will spare you the details, mainly because this blog is not an appropriate place for the details, but suffice it to say that I am VERY glad that Friday has arrived.

Instead, here are some photos I took last month when I went to California for a day. The weather was brilliantly sunny on the return leg from Ontario, CA to Phoenix, and I had a lot of fun taking photos out the window.

It's always interesting to see the land use patterns in the desert. The contrast of bright green and surrounding tan and brown is striking, especially when it's as bright and sunny as it was that day.

When we flew over this cloud, and the view was really strange! You could see the blurry shadow of our airplane, surrounded by a halo. No tricks -- this photo captures exactly what it looked like. I'd never seen this phenomenon before.

As we neared Phoenix, I noticed we were basically paralleling I-10! I watched the tiny cars move along for quite a while.

Hello, Phoenix. I enjoyed my half hour in your airport.

So a couple weeks ago when we were in Florida...

After watching the most excellent launch of STS-130, we all drove back to our hotel in Orlando and took nice long naps. My parents and brother headed back to Charlotte that afternoon, but Jose and I stuck around for one more night, which gave us time to head over to the KSC Visitor's Center.

Unfortunately for JSC, the KSC Visitor's Center really runs circles around Space Center Houston. It feels more modern, more welcoming, and much larger right from the start. You walk through the main gate and are met with this huge NASA meatball, so of course we had to take a photo. (The "meatball" is NASA's nickname for the agency logo. Even that article I just linked to doesn't explain why, other than to say that it's round. Like a meatball. Shrug.)

Next I took a picture of Jose in front of this Orion mockup. Of course Orion is the vehicle that was just cancelled. Another shrug.

We walked past this shuttle mockup on our way to the Space Shuttle Launch Experience. This is a fairly new attraction, and is a ride that gives you a feeling of what it might be like to launch on the shuttle, complete with shaking, smoke, and the roar of engines. It was actually very well done, and I was really impressed. The ride presented a lot of solid technical information, but in a way that made it accessible and understandable to the general public (which, after all, is the point of a visitor's center). They had lots of video interviews with former astronauts describing the entire launch process, and I was very amused to see that the astronaut who did the bulk of the narrating for the ride was Charlie Bolden. Who is now the NASA Administrator!

After the ride, we walked around the Rocket Garden, which included the gantry that the Apollo 11 astronauts walked across on their way into the capsule!

Jose stopped to admire this F-1 engine. There were five of these babies on the first stage of the Saturn V rocket that took men to the moon. Seeing Jose stand next to it really shows how big they were!

We also hopped in a Gemini capsule mockup, which gave me a newfound respect for the early astronauts. Let's just say I would NOT be first in line to spend two weeks in one of those. Talk about cramped...

Next we walked over to the early space exploration area. One of my favorite things there was the flown Gemini 9 capsule, which was down on the ground so that you could walk all the way around. I particularly love seeing the heat shields on these old vehicles, and imagining all the craziness that went on during the heat of reentry.

After our trip to the visitor's center, we used our badges to drive into KSC. The sun was setting so we had to hurry, but we made a quick stop at the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). This is where they attach the orbiter to the external tank and solid rocket boosters before flight. Then it rolls from here down the 3-mile road to the launch pad. This picture really doesn't convey how immense the VAB really is. It's the fourth-largest building in the WORLD by volume. Each of the stars in the flag painted on the side is 6 feet wide. Yes. It's big.

We drove out to Launch Pad 39A, the site from which Endeavour departed so spectacularly only 14 hours earlier. We had to stop at the gate, but it was still cool.

The sun was setting rapidly, but we also made a quick stop at the press site across the street from the VAB. If you've ever watched a launch on TV, you probably recognize this view of the big clock and flagpole. It was counting up. 14 hours, 25 minutes, and 15 seconds had passed since STS-130's launch!

We also drove past the Shuttle Landing Facility (aka the big runway), but it was almost completely dark by the time we got there, so there was little to see.

We hit the road back to our hotel in Orlando, and the next day we started the two day drive home. The only incident was that I left my toiletry bag in our hotel in Mobile, Alabama. It's been more than 2 weeks, and I've yet to get it returned. I don't care so much about the bag itself and the shampoo and crap in it, but my glasses were in there! I'm hoping it turns up this week, because I really don't want to have to buy a new pair of glasses. My eyes suck, and thus my glasses are not cheap. They say they have it, and each time I've called they say "oh, I'm sorry, we'll go mail it today." But I've heard that 3 times now.

All in all, it was a great trip. Going to see the launch was 110% worthwhile, and although I'm not planning to undertake another drive like that anytime soon, I'm so glad we did it.

Here are my photos of the STS-130 launch early Monday morning. For those interested, I had my camera on a tripod and used my 70-200mm lens, fully zoomed of course. I framed the image prior to launch, and set the camera to f/8 and 1/125 based on the advice of this site. Sure, the launch was in the middle of the night, but it's also bright. Very, very bright.

The launch pad lit up a few hours before launch

I also had my remote, which let me take pictures without viewing the launch through a viewfinder. I got to watch with my own eyes and still get a few photos. In retrospect, it would have been cool to try a long-exposure, but I wasn't entirely confident I'd get the settings right, so I decided to go for single shots.

For those not familiar with all the details of a shuttle launch, this photo shows the moment of main engine ignition. The shuttle's three main engines (the ones on the back of the orbiter) are actually lit 6 seconds before launch. Mission Control has 6 seconds to make sure they're functioning properly, before...

...the solid rocket boosters light. The exhaust from the main engines (which is actually just steam, since the gas is just oxygen and hydrogen) billowed up between the orbiter and those of us on the causeway, which led to a cool silhouette of exhaust that the shuttle rose out of. When the solid rocket boosters light, there is no doubt -- that thing is GOING somewhere, and fast.

It's the solids that are so bright, and they light up the entire sky.

As soon as it clears the launch tower, the entire shuttle stack rolls on its vertical axis to better orient itself for the climb to orbit. This is what the "Houston, roll program" call that you hear from the astronauts means.

The shuttle is really zippy. It jumps off the launch pad like it's been shot out of a cannon, and well, it kinda HAS. A launch is nothing more than a carefully controlled explosion.

After the solid rocket boosters separated two minutes into flight, we were able to see Endeavour's main engines moving through the sky like a star. I think we would have been able to watch them through main engine cut-off at 8.5 minutes, except she went flying over the horizon and out of view.

By the time the crew performed the burn that truly puts them in orbit a half hour later, we were already in the car on our way back to Orlando. I watched the rendezvous from my laptop in an Alabama hotel room.

Photo from Mom's camera (forgot to bring my card reader to FL, so my pics will be later)

At 4:14 a.m. this morning, STS-130 launched on its mission to the International Space Station. And we were watching from the causeway! The second time was the charm, and the weather was obviously more clear last night. We spent the pre-launch hours snug in the car, where it was warmer. There weren't nearly as many people as the night before, and although I still don't totally understand the massive decrease in crowds, I'll chalk it up to a combination of it being a "schoolnight", plus the Super Bowl, plus people not wanting to spend another 4 hours waiting in the cold.

The launch was spectacular. This was the third that I've seen, but the first two were in 1997 and 1998 so it had been quite a while. I'm so glad I was able to see this one with Jose, my parents, and my brother. That made it extra special.

It is difficult to describe what viewing a launch is really like, especially a night launch. I can say things like "it was as bright as the sun" and "the sound crackles and pops and creaks," but that doesn't do it justice. Even the pictures don't do it justice. You really just need to be there yourself, see the light, hear and feel the sound.

So instead of continuing in a futile attempt to describe what seeing a space shuttle launch is like, I will simply encourage any and all of you who are able to make your way to Florida for one of the last four shuttle flights, currently scheduled for March, May, July, and September. It is a trip that is well worth your time.

We left at 3:45 on Friday, stopped in Spanish Fort, Alabama for the night, and arrived in Orlando at 8:15 last night. After a few hours of chilling out with my parents and brother David, who drove down from North Carolina, we headed to KSC. We met my brother, his girlfriend, and her son, who drove up from Miami, just after midnight at the Astronaut Hall of Fame. Packed into two cars with two car passes, we scooted on site and by 12:45 we were parked on the causeway.

The view from the causeway was actually far BETTER than I expected. The launch pad was perfectly aligned with our viewing spot, and the orbiter was in full view. You could easily make out the shape of the orbiter on the stack with your eyes, even though it was more than 6 miles away, and the view through binoculars was awesome.

I was feeling really good about things, but alas, clouds moved in towards the end and scrubbed the launch. Traffic moved quickly off the first part of the causeway, and I optimistically thought we'd beat the rush. But it slowed to a crawl, then a dead stop, and it took 2.5 hours to get back to our hotel next to the Orlando airport. At that point, we all crashed for some much-needed sleep.

I found the scrub far more disappointing this time than other times, perhaps because this time we drove 16 hours to see it. Although I know it's completely irrational, I also feel like it's somehow my fault, because my family drove all the way here and they didn't see it! And Brian and Cindy and Danny were only able to come last night. They drove up from Miami and got little sleep all to see a launch scrub. :(

The five of us will be back again tonight/tomorrow morning. I'm crossing my fingers that it goes this time!