Max Cutler

The past few days, my father and I went down to Orlando to see the Space Shut­tle Atlantis launch into space on mis­sion STS-125, the final repair mis­sion to the Hub­ble space tele­scope. We man­aged to snag tick­ets to watch the launch from the closet point open to the pub­lic, the NASA Cause­way about 5 miles from the Pad 39A com­plex. Fol­low­ing are my pic­tures from the launch and from the Kennedy Space Cen­ter Vis­i­tor Com­plex, as well as my reac­tion to the launch itself.

I’ve been a space enthu­si­ast all my life, and have fol­lowed the Shut­tle pro­gram since I watched John Glenn’s return to space in my 4th grade com­puter lab in 1998. I’ve watched most of the 34 shut­tle launches since then, and have fol­lowed most of them very closely dur­ing the mis­sions; I even woke up one Sat­ur­day morn­ing at 5 a.m. to watch the dar­ing repair of the Inter­na­tional Space Station’s torn solar array panel.

How­ever, I had never been down to see a launch in per­son, which I had heard was an incred­i­ble expe­ri­ence. When I saw that the STS-125 launch fell right in my off-week between school and my sum­mer intern­ship, I jumped at the oppor­tu­nity to go down with my Dad (fel­low space enthu­si­ast) to see it. With the Shut­tles retir­ing next year and only 8 flights remain­ing, I couldn’t be sure that I’d ever have such a per­fect align­ment with my per­sonal schedule.

We spent roughly two hours at the Kennedy Space Center’s Vis­i­tor Com­plex, which is home to a num­ber of exhibits and the Rocket Gar­den. Below you can find most of the non-duplicate pic­tures that I took in the Vis­i­tors area, includ­ing shots of the mock shut­tle Explorer, the rock­ets in the Rocket Gar­den, the next-generation Orion crew cap­sule mockup, and a full-size LEGO ver­sion of the Mars Explo­ration Rovers (another of my favorite space missions).

Then around noon we headed out to the VIP launch view­ing area, out on the Banana River Cause­way about 5 miles from the launch pad, and the closet peo­ple can get if not a mem­ber of the press or under the employ­ment of NASA. We then pro­ceeded to wait for about 2 hours in the record 95 degree heat, the shade of our umbrella mak­ing it barely tolerable.

But in the end, it was absolutely worth it. It only lasted a few min­utes, but it was an awe inspir­ing sight. I tried to grab a few pic­tures as best I could, but also wanted to take it in with my own eyes.  Pic­tures are below.

At liftoff, the shut­tle and pad were enshrouded with smoke/water vapor, but it quickly cleared the tow­ers. The exhaust plume is as bright as the sun, leav­ing an after­im­age on the retina, some­thing which def­i­nitely is not cap­tured prop­erly in the lim­ited dynamic range of dig­i­tal still and video cameras.

It took what seemed like a long time, but was prob­a­bly only 5–10 sec­onds, for the sound waves to hit us. They dump enor­mous amounts of water under the pad before igni­tion, which serves to sup­press vibra­tion and noise from the ini­tial liftoff, so only once the shut­tle started rolling to the east did the sound really reach us. You lit­er­ally feel it in your bones, like the loud­est sub-woofer you’ve ever heard.

Even­tu­ally all we could see was a bright dot of light, then the solid rocket boost­ers fell away and it was mostly lost to sight. Then the thou­sands of peo­ple on the beach make a run for their cars and buses. Three hours later we finally got back to our hotel. Lots of travel for only a few min­utes, but it was totally worth it and I’d love to do it again if given the oppor­tu­nity. Espe­cially for a night launch.

Launch Pics

Kennedy Space Cen­ter Vis­i­tor Complex