When we found that the SpaceX rocket was scheduled to launch
yesterday morning, Pablo and I were both excited to go see it up close.
And no, Pablo doesn’t speak Spanish. His name is Paul.
Apparently his mother called him Pablo for some reason and it stuck. He’s a bit
of a tech-geek, a former “Remote Cross Platform Mobile Application Developer”
whateverthatmeans and unless you have many extra hours to spend, never, I mean
never ever, ask him about bitcoin. A very bright, sweet guy who develops
content with Hannah for her massive Instagram following and acts as her “base”
in their Acroyoga practice and workshops. Not easy. She’s a self-admitted
“bossy flier”. But No Habla Espanol, mainly Habla bitcoin, and tech stuff.
On the drive down for the 10:36am lift off, Google told us
that admission to the Kennedy Space Center was $50 per adult, although you get
$4.00 off if you are old and creepy. Carla isn’t either of those things but
since I double up on both, it would have been $192. for the four of us. The
promo said that we should count on spending several days there to really take
it all in. Carla had to work last night, Hannah and Pablo had a workshop to
teach, and I need to be all diapered up and in bed by 7:30, so we decided to
pass.
The second best spot to watch the show, other than the
Kennedy Space Center itself, is at Space View Park. It’s on the shore of the
Indian River, immediately opposite the launch pads, so that’s where we landed.
Pablo was bummed that he wasn’t close enough to be shaken,
rattled and rolled and have his hair all singed off, but was a good sport about
it anyway.
We had a perfect viewing spot, the day sunny, mostly clear,
and hot enough in the direct sunlight that I lingered back under the shade of a
large oak until just before liftoff.
The excitement was palatable in the crowd as the countdown
began, everyone chanting along: T minus 20, 19, 18, 17…
No dummy, I had already asked some local dude which of the
platforms we could see silhouetted against the sky was #40, where the SpaceX
rocket was, so I knew exactly where to focus.
Standing behind a shady military monument with my eyes fixed
on pad #40, the entire crowd started to cheer at liftoff…but I couldn't see
shit. It turns out the local guy didn’t know his head from a tater so I had
positioned myself in exactly the wrong place, with my view of the awesome fires
of liftoff entirely blocked by the military monument. I was looking one way
while the crowd was oohing and aahing looking in an entirely different
direction… the right way. Sharp guy that I am, when the rocket started to
visibly clear the monument and I saw fire in the sky, the rocket mostly
traveled straight up behind the flagpole immediately centered behind the
monument base. It was like watching a flagpole eclipse, the tall black shadow
of the flagpole silhouetted by rocket flames shooting out from both sides. That
was cool, but I couldn’t see the damn rocket itself and the people around me
were too tightly packed for me to move. With the flagpole shadow centered on my
face only, completely blocking my view, I made appreciative sounds along with
the crowd, just to fit in.
The real show for me though was the SpaceX return and soft
landing five minutes later. The resulting sonic boom was deafening. I didn’t
have to light any of the cherry bombs I had brought for back-up if it failed to
impress.
Seeing the rocked descend and land like that was the
real-life, Technicolor version of the cheesy black and white science fiction
movies I so loved as a kid. Buster Crabbe (Google it, youngsters) would have
been proud.
Experienced camera guy that I am, I captured it all on my
iPhone, but for some reason it looks like a close up of the back of some guy’s
head.
Here’s the real deal, shot by someone
in the crowd with us at Space View Park yesterday. Their photo doesn’t look
like the back of some guy’s head though.
They must have had a much better
camera than I do.
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