FIELD JOURNAL

Launch Day

Launch Day is the day when the Kennedy Space Center takes center stage in the news. Thousands of journalists, reporters and film crews from around the world assemble here to record a new entry into the history books. The scene can be compared to the filming of a Hollywood blockbuster movie. However, after the orbiter is safely orbiting the Earth at 17,500 miles per hour and the press center is again still, the appearance may be that things are quiet until the next time the ground shakes and the sky is lit up. However, this appearance is deceiving. We are up and running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, nearly every day of the year.

There are four orbiters in the fleet: Columbia, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour. At any one time, each of these incredible machines is in a different state of preparation for its upcoming launch. There are numerous very talented people dedicated to every aspect of the space shuttle. We have teams to process the solid rocket boosters, the external tank, and the orbiter itself. In addition, there are thousands who keep the facilities ready to go such as the launch pads and orbiter processing facilities. Even more help to manage and schedule the entire processing operations. As diversified and varied as their jobs may be, they all come together for one purpose, to launch the space shuttle. Imagine a machine that weighs 4,500,000 pounds. It is 184 feet tall and consists of three main components: two 149-foot-long solid rocket boosters (the largest in the entire world), a 154-foot external tank that will hold over 500,000 gallons of liquid fuel, and an orbiter that is the most complicated and amazing spacecraft the world has ever seen.

Next take this machine and ignite its propellents in just exactly the right way, remembering you are igniting some of the most dangerous fuel in existence. Now you accelerate the most powerful rocketship into the sky reaching a speed of 17,500 miles per hour. And, by the way, you put the spacecraft into exactly the right orbit, at exactly the precise second you want to. Then after you complete a highly complex mission in outer space, you fall back to Earth. On the way back you heat your vehicle to over 3,000 degrees F. Finally, at the end of a several million mile journey and after orbiting the planet hundreds of times, you land at the exact spot you want at precisely the exact second you want to.

It is one of the greatest adventures man has ever seen. Welcome on our journey into the future!