posted 04-23-2013 01:12 PM               

Motherboard TV's "Space Shuttle Parking Lot: Tailgating the Rocket Launch," which you can watch online here, may also be of interest.

To those who've witnessed it first-hand, it's the spectacle of a lifetime. People come to Florida from as far away as Michigan or Alaska or England or Italy, arriving in droves by car and motor home, toting binoculars, blankets and American flags. They line up along a worn river bank in the towns near the launch pad on Cape Canaveral, waiting for days, then nail-biting hours, to see a group of people embark on a completely different kind of journey, this one powered by rockets that do zero to 17,000 mph in 8.5 minutes. To the fans, this is the Super Bowl, NASCAR, the World Cup and Independence Day rolled into one. The astronauts strapped into the massive Space Transportation System aren't just rocket jockeys. They're rock stars.

Last year, when Space Shuttle Endeavor was scheduled to leave the Earth at night for the last time on its way to the space station, Motherboard.tv producer David Feinberg and I joined those throngs of space pilgrims. Inspired in part by films like "The Right Stuff" and the underground '80s documentary "Heavy Metal Parking Lot," we traversed Cape Canaveral and nearby Titusville in an attempt to capture the launch from multiple angles. We met some of the folks who work at NASA, but our focus was on the fans, who had come from far and wide for a grueling space shuttle tailgate party.

posted 04-23-2013 01:54 PM               

And then the launch gets scrubbed.

You'll have rarely seen people more disappointed and angry in such a case. For many, that was the only chance they ever had. I went down to see a few shuttle launches and ALL of them were scrubbed. One was scrubbed at 9 seconds. The only launches I've ever seen were at great distances, well over 100 miles, and you only see a dot.

posted 04-23-2013 11:51 PM               

For me, the three shuttle launches I witnessed will stay in my mind forever. Granted I was the closest a member of the public could get for all of them (the press site), but it did not disappoint at all. Seeing something that big going uphill on two of the biggest and brightest colums of flame one could ever see (with a brilliant yellow glow that film has yet to accurately convey since the brightness of it tends to wash it out in photographs) made the experience worth it. Sure, I've seen the best day launch I could (STS-121) and a night launch (STS-131). But even the final launch of STS-135 still left me in awe even though the vehicle disappeared from sight when it went up through the cloud layer.

posted 04-26-2013 01:33 PM               

I don't know that the "tailgating" atmosphere changed too much, other than the varying ability to bring food and drink to one's viewing location...it's a little different waiting for a launch attempt (or a couple of landings I saw out in California even farther back) than a going to a game, but there's definitely anticipation of experiencing something memorable.

posted 04-26-2013 01:48 PM            

After turning down our previous invitation to the penultimate launch, I was informed by the NASA History Office guy that we had been "recycled" for the last launch, but he warned that the guest list exceeded the slots available. So it was a pleasant surprise when three weeks before launch day we got the invite in the mail.

That was far too late to get a hotel room anywhere near Kennedy Space Center but fortunately we had already planned to go to the farm in Ocala to celebrate Barbara's Dad's 90th birthday so we hung out there afterwards, waiting for the launch. Mapquest informed me that if we took I-75 to the Florida Turnpike then on to State Road 528, it would take us two hours and twenty minutes to get to the Visitor Complex where we had to register and then board a bus to the viewing site. Okay, we're there, not a problem.

But the day before launch, the weather turned cloudy and rainy all over Central Florida. When we went to bed that night they were giving only a thirty percent chance of a launch and since the launch window was only ten minutes, we were pretty much resigned to missing our chance to see it, but we decided that we owed it to ourselves to at least drive over until they called it off.

So we're up at 4:30 and on the road by 6 a.m. and the skies were actually looking better the longer we drove with big patches of blue breaking up the cloud cover. Plus the predicted traffic didn't seem to be a problem — we zipped down 75, got on the Florida Parkway and paid all those damned tolls and passed the Orlando Airport exit with no problem.

But it was too good to be true. When we got on SR 528, things backed up and we crawled our way for the rest of the trip. We now know what a million person traffic jam looks like — saturation.

We knew the last bus left the Visitor Complex one hour before liftoff (leaving at 10:30 a.m.) so we started to get worried that we'd go all this way just to miss it. But we had no option but to limp along and keep our fingers crossed. The Mapquest two hour, plus trip was now over four hours.

When we finally got to the security checkpoint on the causeway we saw what was the last of the holdups — lots of people who didn't have permits to get on the Kennedy Space Center grounds were driving up to the checkpoint where they were challenged by the cops. The guy in front of us whipped out some official looking document to the cop who unfolded it and he then told the guy to pull out of the line into a parking lot where they shunted all the unauthorized people so they could turn them around. We then pulled up with our Official NASA Permit prominently displayed on the windshield and the cop actually said "thank you — have a nice day", waved us through and for a moment we felt like we might really be VIPs.

But the feeling was fleeting as it was now about 10:15 and the sign told us the Visitor Complex was six and a half miles away. So I floored it, we parked the car, grabbed camera and binoculars and hoofed to to the registration desk. When we got there they were already taking down the ropes and generally packing it up. But we got registered, got our bus pass and visitor's pass and we were one of maybe the last of ten or twelve people who got loaded on to the last bus. Whew! Since there were extra spaces on that last bus NASA let employees take the empty seats — the lady sitting across from us said many people simply didn't make it as they were still caught up in that epic traffic jam. Needless to say, we were very lucky. Or that it was just fate that we were going to see that last launch no matter what.

posted 04-26-2013 02:03 PM               

What stands out from all launches is the sheer power of the vehicle as seen when all engines light up, plus those two roman candles called SRBs. And the acceleration is impressive, almost like a race car compared to the Saturn V. You also get the full effect when the sound and vibration hits you seconds after the fact. The night launch of STS-82 was also spectacular, turning night into day in an instant.

posted 04-26-2013 08:39 PM               

• STS-3 NASA Causeway
  
• STS-5 Titusville
  
• STS-7 NASA Causeway
  
• 51C Press Site
  
• 51G Press Site
  
• 61B Press Site
  
• STS-26 NASA Causeway
  
• STS-63 Press Site
  
• STS-85 Press Site
  
• STS-93 Press Site
  
• STS-118 Titusville

posted 04-26-2013 10:06 PM               

STS-29 was very memorable because it was my first from the causeway, and at the end of the mission I made it out to Edwards for the landing too. The crew came out and talked to the crowd for awhile, and Discovery towed right in front of us later in the day. STS-30 a larger group of us watched from the causeway, as we did STS-31 with Hubble. I had met the STS-37 at Baltimore's airport as they were leaving from training at Goddard, so felt more closely connected to the crew for that launch.

STS-40 was my first launch from the VIP site and WHAT a difference! It was loud and visually stunning, and there were a number of astronauts and even cosmonauts floating around the site. I think STS-44 was the best of all...they turned out all of the lights at the VIP site at T-9, and with the searchlights focused on the shuttle 3 miles away I had the eerie feeling those guys must have had before an atom bomb test in the '50's. When Atlantis lifted off, it climbed through a greenish haze layer before popping out and becoming a second sunrise.

Those boosters are incredibly bright, and I always remember a distinctly more glaring orange than yellow as the photos show. Just like looking at a rising sun on the horizon. I took a great video of that launch, but was really let down the first time I viewed it. I remember saying, "But that's not anything like what it really looked like!" The brilliance, the colors, and the details are so much more vivid with the eyeball, no picture can truly capture it.

STS-45 was memorable because I had my whole family down there at the VIP site, including my grandmother who was in her mid-90's at the time. She was born in 1908, just 5 years after the Wright Brothers flew the first powered aircraft, and now got to see the greatest airplane ever built fly into space.

I made two quick trips down to Titusville to see the scrub and night launch of STS-56. While not up close, you really can't go wrong with a night shot. When the SRB's are tumbling away spitting sparks out, the beach crowds and VIP's all have the same vantage point.

STS-91 from the causeway was my first one in several years, and my 9 year old son got to see his first shuttle launch, the last mission to Mir.

And that was it until STS-135. Being the last one, I had to see it. My brother flew a NASA contactor down for it, and I airlined in and met them the night before. We staked out in Titusville around 3AM with thousands of other people and got to see the last one go. Atlantis climbed silently from our perspective, but the crowds were cheering as loud as any football game. I set the camera on a timer and got a shot of us both with the orbiter rising up between us.