STS-118 Endeavour Launch
I was scheduled to fly back from a conference in Florida this past Wednesday. Upon arriving at the airport we discovered that our United flight was running late and we’d miss out connecting flight from Denver. The next flight was the next day so we had to stay an extra night. When I say we I mean a fellow work buddy and me. But all was not lost! My work buddy, Brenda, called the Clerk of Court (who also happened to be in town that night), so we arranged to rent a car and started heading east. We were warned that the roads would be a parking lot, but who cares! it’s not everyday you get to see a shuttle launch!
As we were speeding eastward I was thinking to myself “I sure hope it launches”. You hear of so many times when it’s ready to launch but something delays it. We arrived about 6 minutes before the scheduled launch at 6:36pm in a town call Titusville. It was such a perfect spot, I swear the humidity cleared just before the launch to grant a better view!
Some guy gave us the run down…. “1st you’ll see it, then you’ll hear it, then you’ll feel it”. Another person started to count down from 10, 9 … everybody around joined in … 8, 7. At 3 you could start to see smoke exploding from the ground, then at 0 a bright yellow flame – almost like a piece of the sun – started to force the shuttle up into the air.
I was so excited that I could be there to witness this human achievement. People started yelling with pride and I joined in. It was, as if for that brief moment, the world was one, that this example of might joined all who watched with a common bond. Car’s disobeyed their traffic lights, everybody stopped, looked and cheered.
After about 1.5 minutes we began to hear the mighty roar of the engines, again everybody cheered. Just then you could feel a wind rushing against your face which settled down after about 10 seconds. Around this point the booster rockets detached and the smoke trail ended, it was then plain sailing for the astronauts. I can say plain sailing because I sat next to a guy (on my fight home) who helps to build the booster rockets. He said in the initial 2 minutes, when the boosters are firing, the astronauts cannot focus their eyes on anything. But after the boosters separate it’s a smooth ride.
I didn’t want to loose sight of the tiny ball of blue light as it speed upwards. I knew that once I let it go all I will have left will be my memories of this spectacular event. I will never forget this special day, brought to you by United. You see – event a bad situation can turn out to be a good thing!
