STS-119 Discovery Launch

STS-119 has been delayed several times over the past few months. Most recently, it was scheduled for Wednesday, March 11, but that date was scrubbed due to a hydrogen valve leak. NASA rescheduled the launch for Sunday, March 15 at 7:43pm. All morning, I refreshed the NASA web page to see if there was anything new of interest and to see if the countdown was still on. At 12:33pm, the countdown passed the point where the valve leak had been discovered on the previous launch attempt, so things were looking good. At that time, the weather was 80% go due to some showers and partial overcast sky. For me, 80% was good enough, so we packed our gear and headed for Titusville.

The previous Tuesday, I programmed all the best viewing locations into my GPS. In the car, I pulled up Sand Point Park and let the GPS find the best route. It was busy finding satellites as we backed out of the garage.

We arrived at the park about four hours before the launch. Andrew headed straight for the playground and we followed. We had lots of time to kill and I chose this park specifically because it had a playground and picnic tables, and was very close to the best viewing location. Andrew continued to play, but I wanted to check out the other nearby viewing locations - specifically Space View Park.

I grabbed my cell phone and said good-bye to Susan and Andrew and walked two blocks to Space View Park. People were already camped out near the water's edge. Across the Indian River, the launchpad was clearly visible. A waterfront spot is by far the best location, especially if you want to shoot some photos. I did want to take pictures, but I wasn't willing to set up camp and stay put for the next 3 1/2 hours, so I moved on, looking for other good viewing spots.

I found the center of the space travel geek world nearby, and I say that lovingly because I'm only a pocket protector and a slide rule away from being one of them myself. These folks are hard core. They had their spots all setup, complete with chairs, umbrellas, coolers, wireless computer connections, radios, cameras... the works. The official NASA countdown was being broadcast over loudspeakers. I saw the local T.V. station guys on site. I saw camera lenses that must have been 1000 mm (1 meter long). There were vendors selling hats and T-shirts. The ice cream man was there, playing his one, quickly-becoming-annoying song over and over. I saw a guy with an ultramobile computer with wireless Internet access. He was planning to do live, real-time blogging (tweating, to be precise) of the event to a party of similar-minded astro-geeks in Australia. He had a clock on his computer desktop set to Australian time so he wouldn't have to do the conversion in his head. I had to struggle to walk down the sidewalk without stepping on someone, or their pile of stuff.

I quickly concluded that this was not the place for me. I crossed the street away from the river and found that the park continued on the other side, as well. There was hardly anyone on this side. There was a nice pond with fountains, and a hill at the opposite end. I started thinking that hill may be a pretty good spot.

I called Susan and let her know where I was and what I was doing. I started walking back to Sand Point Park and met Susan and Andrew heading my way. I took them back to see some of my choice locations. Andrew saw the water's edge and wanted to get a closer look. We walked to the end of a drainage pipe before turning around and finding rocks to throw in the river. With that out of his system, we continued on our journey. Andrew heard the ice cream man song and instantly recognized its meaning. I told him we could walk to the drug store and get ice cream much cheaper. He didn't want to walk that far, so I pointed to the CVS store across the street and he changed his mind. We bought a pint of Ben & Jerry's and found a cool spot in the shade to eat it.

Andrew, now fully sugared up, was ready to return to the playground. He played, while Susan and I worked on getting lunch/dinner ready. We ate sandwiches and snacks, then packed the food away and started gathering our blankets, binoculars, camera gear, and Andrew's bag of assorted can't-leave-home-without-'em toys. It was now about 1 1/2 hours until scheduled launch time.

We walked back to the little hill near the pond at Space View Park and set up camp on the little hill between two palm trees. I set up the tripod and camera near the fence around the pond and started checking angles and composures at different zoom levels. All of a sudden, our little quiet spot became quite busy. Strangers started asking if they could see the launch from here. We point to the launchpad, which was visible in the distance between two palm trees on the opposite side of the pond. Before long, we had a family from Texas and an older couple from south Florida - who had never witnessed a live launch - sharing our hill.

The Texans had the good fortune of having the previous launch delayed. They had just arrived in Orlando on Saturday and were in town for a Disney vacation. They had two young daughters and Andrew quickly showed them his bag of toys and started playing with the five (almost six) year old.

The time passed quickly and soon it was 7:30. I was starting to get anxious. I had no idea how to shoot the launch. If it were a day launch, I'd shoot with normal exposure times - 1/250 seconds at ISO 100, for example. If it were a night launch, I'd shoot 30 seconds at ISO 400 or 800. In either case, I could try some test shots to judge the best exposure settings and adjust as necessary. But this was a twilight launch. Every minute or two, the lighting changed as the sun fell in the western sky. I ended up choosing 1 second exposures at ISO 100 with the aperature dialed down to f22.

Soon it was showtime. I heard the crowd saying they saw fire; the shuttle was launching. The sky began to light up and I started snapping pictures. The camera was set for continuous shooting, so I simply held the shutter release and continued holding it until the shuttle was no longer in my frame. The photo below is the last photo in the series.

As the shuttle climbed through the atmosphere, it quickly reached an altitude at which it crossed the twilight boundary and entered direct sunlight. The smoke plume changed from gray, to orange, then to bright white. I reconfigured the camera and tripod and snapped a few more pictures of the brightly lit column of smoke. The photo below is my favorite of the bunch. If you click the picture, you'll get a full size photo. If you look very closely, you'll see the solid rocket boosters separating from the shuttle.

This was my second live launch and I've enjoyed them both. I still haven't felt the rumble that all the residents claim to feel during a launch. Personally, I think they are simply embellishing the story a little bit.

After the launch, the crowd started moving our way. Within minutes, we were completely surrounded, then a few minutes later, we were completely alone. Everyone, so it seemed, was now sitting in a car trying to get out of town. We discovered that the fountain was lit with red and orange lights, so I took some pictures near it. Andrew thought it looked like a volcano fountain.

As we started walking back to our car, a group asked us if we had seen the space station. We said no, and a man pointed to a dot in the sky that was moving quickly to the northeast. For all I know, he may have been pulling my leg, but if not, what a nice cherry on top of a great day.

Back in the park, we joined the race out of town. It wasn't much of a race, though. It was more like a rain delay at Daytona. Everyone was in their cars, but no one was going anywhere. It took forever to drive the two miles to I-95. Relief at last, or so we thought. Once on the highway, we quickly came to a stop once again. We crawled along in first gear for about six miles, at which point all those darn tourists (he he) headed back to Orlando and we continued on to the south. During the long crawl, I discovered the trip calculator on the GPS. I had plenty of time to play with it. We were averaging 11 mph since we started the trip an hour earlier. Our remaining time was locked on 1 hour 14 minutes for at least 40 minutes.

Home at last after a long, fun, exciting day of playground playing, ice cream eating, picnic lunching, and shuttle launching. I'm looking forward to the next one already.

UPDATE:

As I was moving the photos to my computer, I discovered that quickly viewing the photos one after another created an animation of the launch. Using Picasa, I put together a litte time-lapse movie of the launch.