Seeing a Night Launch

Well, I saw my first ever night launch of the Space Shuttle. It wasn't like anything I had ever seen before!

I happened to be in Florida on a business trip when the Shuttle was scheduled to launch, so I decided to drive over to Cape Canaveral and see the launch from up close. It was supposed to happen at 4 a.m. on the morning of December 3, so I was at the Kennedy Space Center extra early (about 12:30 a.m.) to make sure I got a good spot. Things seemed to be going well, and everybody was excited about the first Shuttle launch to the Space Station. However, with less than a minute left, the launch was called off. There had been some alarms on the Shuttle, and by the time they discussed what happened it was too late - we had missed the launch window.

For those who don't know what a launch window is - sometimes the Shuttle needs to be at a particular place in orbit. This time we needed to meet up with the Russian part of the Space Station that was already in space. So we had to launch at a certain time. Our launch window for STS-88 was only three minutes long. The alarms came so late in the countdown that people didn't have a lot of time to respond, and we missed the launch window by two seconds. Ugh!

So, the next night, everyone was back again, ready to see a launch. This time the launch was scheduled at 3:30 a.m., and we all kept our fingers crossed that it would happen! Well, we got to T-31 seconds, and everyone got really quiet ... and then they kept counting down ... T-5,4,3,2,1 ... Liftoff! It was like the sun was rising, it lit up the whole sky. The ground shook beneath our feet. You could FEEL the power of the Shuttle as it rose into the sky. Of course, we all watched and kept our fingers crossed until the solid rocket boosters separated from shuttle (since the Challenger exploded because of the solid rocket boosters), and then we all relaxed. What a rush!

Anyway, Merry Christmas to everyone and have a Happy New Year :-)