Published in The Photographers Mail 2006
July 4th – the biggest firework for Independence Day
A perfect, fragile porcelain-blue sky with a few white fluffy clouds, green grass sloping gently down to blue-green water which is ruffled by a light breeze. A dolphin’s fin breaks the surface and disappears – there are alligators and manatees out there somewhere too. Colourful, stripy umbrellas shading people from the heat of the sun. Stands selling souvenirs and hot dogs, but nobody is queuing for them now. Everybody is standing, staring at a hazy blob on the horizon six mile away across the water. Space Shuttle Discovery is on Launch Complex 39B, and the air is electric with anticipation.
T minus sixty seconds and counting. The voice coming from the loudspeakers echoes in the silence. It sounds corny, like something out of an old American movie.
The previous evening, my son Mark and I were sharing pizza and beer on the beach with the family of one of Discovery’s crew: Piers Sellers, mission specialist and spacewalker. We were all staying at the same motel in Cocoa Beach a few miles south of Cape Canaveral. There were 25 of them, mostly from England – Piers’s mother and his wife and son, as well as his four brothers with their respective wives and children. But one of the brothers, Viv, is a freelance designer who lives in Wellington, and we often work together, which is how Mark and I came to be here, and carrying “Astronaut Guest” passes to the special viewing area.
The launch had been set for 1st July, but on that day an anvil cloud with its attendant thunderstorm, one of many that rolled in every afternoon, dared to approach to within 28 miles of the launchpad, so it was called off at the last minute, or to be precise, at T minus nine minutes and holding. The next day I queued up at the gate marked “Astronaut Guests Only” for new bus tickets to take us back out to the NASA Causeway. A man with a guest list asked me which crewmember had invited me. I said “Piers Sellers” in my best pommy/kiwi accent. “Why!” he gushed in his broad Florida drawl, “Yew even sound like him!”
But the weather got worse, and a 48-hour stand-down was ordered. Then a small piece of insulating foam was found to have fallen off the main fuel tank, and it looked like there was going to be a long postponement – perhaps weeks. Late in evening of the 3rd we were enjoying pizzas at another Sellers family gathering on the beach, when I headed back to the motel to get some more beer. I turned on the TV for the 9 o’clock news. It had just been announced that the damaged foam was not serious enough to postpone the launch. I let out a whoop! and ran back to the beach to let the family know.
July 4th dawned a little cloudy, but it soon cleared to a perfect day, and it was all on. Everyone on the bus from the Kennedy Space Center to the viewing area on the NASA Causeway was buzzing with excitement. Launchpad 39B was just visible in the distance, but it was hard to believe it was really going to happen.
Twelve, eleven, ten, nine – sweat trickles into my right eye as I squint through the viewfinder of my Canon digital camera, attached to the tripod by its long white lens. The Space Shuttle and the launch tower waver in the hot air, the distance turning it into an impressionist blur of colours and shapes.
Eight, seven, six, we have go for main engine start. My mouth has gone dry, and find I’m holding my breath – it’s not really happening this time… surely it will be called off again.
Two, one, booster ignition, and lift off of the Space Shuttle Discovery!
Huge clouds of white smoke and steam belch out on either side of tower. Then they turn to orange, lit up by a blinding sheet of flame. The spacecraft appears out of the maelstrom, a white delta-winged plane attached to a huge orange fuel tank, like a giant bullet. The flames are coming from two white pencil-shaped Solid Rocket Boosters stuck to its sides. Very slowly the whole concoction climbs into the sky. People are whooping and cheering, but from the spaceship nothing but silence. It arcs off to the right on its supporting inferno and rolls slowly over on its back, leaving a thick trail of perfect white smoke. I am tilting the camera upwards, trying to keep the spacecraft properly framed as it accelerates. My other camera with its wide-angle lens is clamped to the tripod leg, clicking away on an automatic timer. Then the noise arrives. A deep thundering roar hits my solar plexus and drowns out everything – the loudspeakers, the cheering, and the click of the cameras. It’s not really a sound – I’m not hearing it so much as feeling it. This must be what it’s like to go deaf.
As the smoke column curves upwards to heaven, the thunder fades and the background sounds slowly return. Loudspeaker-man is running off statistics:
One minute forty-seven seconds into the flight, twenty-two miles altitude, fifteen miles downrange, travelling at two thousand six hundred miles an hour. Standing by for the SRB separation.
More cheering, and through the camera I can see the two little white pencils fall away, still spouting faint orange flames. Of the Space Shuttle itself all I can see now is a tiny white light from its onboard rocket engines, like a little sun moving slowly across the sky. Then nothing but an eerie quiet.
The smoke column slowly drifts to the left in the breeze, deforming into a mushroom cloud. People start to pack up and leave, but the voice on the loudspeakers is still going:
Four minutes eight seconds into the flight, sixty-one miles in altitude, one hundred and fifty miles downrange, five thousand miles per hour is its speed…
By the time we have walked back to the waiting buses he has announced that Space Shuttle Discovery is now over Tasmania, and I ponder that it’s going to take us a lot longer than that to get back to our part of the world – home to New Zealand.
We flew United Airlines to Orlando, Florida via Sydney, San Francisco, and Chicago, returning via Denver, and stopping in San Francisco for a few days on the way back.
Every airport should have what Orlando has: a hotel on top of the terminal building. The Hyatt International is comfortable and plush, with a good view of the planes coming and going (in total silence – the soundproofing is brilliant.) But best of all, after arriving at some ungodly hour (1am) after a 34-hour journey, it’s great to just walk from Arrivals to the lift up to reception.
At Cocoa Beach, near Cape Canaveral there is a hotel called Fawlty Towers – but we didn’t try it! The Wakulla Suites is a large motel much like many in New Zealand, with large spacious units and a swimming pool. (My son remarked that his walk-in wardrobe was bigger than the whole apartment he stayed in in Japan.) It was just a short walk to the beach, which can get quite crowded during the day, but is beautiful in the early morning and late evening.
© copyright 2006 Nick Servian
www.nickservian.com
Note: The image below captured by Nick Servian was shot with an 800mm lens (400mm with 2x converter) from the V.I.P. Viewing Area about 16 Kms away.
(The Special Viewing Area for relatives of the crew had to be evacuated straight after the launch because a ball of poisonous gas from the take-off was heading towards them.)
