Killing Time in the Swamp
Friday night, after the initial liftoff plans were scrubbed, I realized I didn't have a place to stay. Randy, my friend who directs the national L-5 Society, told me that he was going to Daytona, Fla., to speak at a banquet. An aeronautical school sponsoring the banquet provided lodging accommodations for the "VIPs" up there, so I hitched a ride with him.
At the banquet, I had the good fortune of sitting with Keith Lofstrum and musician Herbie Hancock, who came to Florida to record the launch on some video equipment. Both are L-5ers.
We had a discussion of the merits of space-based lasers as weapons. I'm particularly up on the laser field and I argued against the use of such weapons on the basis that we did no have the technology to power a laser accurately over the large distances required.
After the bruhaha over the technical issues settled down, the subject gradually moved back to the shuttle itself as we discussed Friday's launch problems with a former United Nations ambassador, also an L-5 member. We ended the evening on the note that it was time to take sex and violence off the streets and put it back into music, where it belongs.
Tourists on a Reed Raft with Aliens
After renting a car in Daytona, Keith and I decided to drive down the Space Center the next morning to play tourists for a while. The visitor's center had some amazing memorabilia. A Mercury rocket isn't much bigger than a telephone pole, and its capsule can fit inside a Volkswagen. And the later Saturn rockets were not much bigger, about the size of four boxcars.
All in all, the crudeness of yesterday's hardware led me to an analysis I tried to present to people for the rest of the day: The real grandeur of the whole space program is not that we are just going into space (as noble as that might be) but that out method of traveling is analogous to floating across the Pacific Ocean in a reed raft.
I realized if the aliens landed and asked us, "Do you have space travel?" we'd reply, of course, "Yes, we have space travel." Then they might ask, "How do you do it?" We would have to reply, "We get the biggest collection of liquid hydrogen, oxygen and high explosive we can build, then we sit on top of it and torch the son-of-a-bitch off!"
Now you know, they might really be impressed with that, in the same sense we are impressed with the thought of Vikings coming to the New World in wooden ships.
The Sunset Shuttle Tour, or "Surely, People in Iowa have Cocaine!"
Late in the afternoon, Keith and I left for the press area. For the first launch attempt, there were more spectators there than had been at the launch area ever before. The second attempt was scheduled for early Sunday morning, and it seemed everybody in the southern United States who had a cooler and a six-pack of beer decided to go to Florida on Saturday night. They spent the evening on the beach and viewed the shuttle in the morning.
Also at the previous launch attempt, the highways didn't back up until early in the morning. Now it was bumper to bumper fairly early the night before the launch.
We wanted to get to the press area as early as possible so that we may join the press tour. The only tour left was the "Sunset Shuttle Tour."
We got on the buses and rode out to the pad area. Our escort was a nice young lady who happened to be packing a stainless steel Ruger Security Six. This was the first time we were escorted by armed guards.
The guard at the checkpoint had some sort of misunderstanding with the escort on our buses and wouldn't let us pass. Hence, we waited at the checkpoint until someone drove out with additional papers indicating that it was okay to take this particular group out for a tour at that point in the evening.
We were driven past the shuttle to the east, where we were dropped off in a parking lot. Soldiers (or someone in combat fatigue and carrying guns) established a boundary between two signs, the road, and a swamp.
Here, we could stand and take pictures as the sun descended behind the shuttle. I had a very good time, until the batteries in my camera failed during the middle of a power-winder cycle and my camera jammed. One of the reporters standing next to me was more than happy to treat me to a set of batteries.
As I removed from my camera bad a small cylindrical container holding my lens brush, the reporter from Heavy Metal magazine looked over and asked if he could have some of my cocaine.
I looked at him oddly, and he asked if I was from New York.
"No, I'm from Iowa," to which he replied, "Surely, people in Iowa have cocaine, don't you?!"
He was looking at my small brush container. I showed him the brush inside and he was quite disappointed. Nonetheless, we had a nice conversation about some of the artwork of H.R. Geigor that once sold through Heavy Metal .
About this time, we entered into the conspiracy. We decided if we were to linger enough after sunset, we would be able to take pictures of the shuttle illuminated by the searchlights after dark. It was painfully obvious the security people wanted to get us out of there. We told both the escort and the driver of the first bus, "We're going to stay here and stall for as long as we canuntil they drag us kicking and screaming into the buses. Would you please drive as slowly as you can?"
They knew what we were up to, and, knowing we really wanted to stick around, they said they would try as best they could. The last 50 photographers stood around until they were herded on to the buses. We took off down the road at a slow pace set by the driver of the lead bus. We drove slowly around the shuttle and took pictures of it. By this time it had gotten dark and the illuminated shuttle was starkly beautiful against the black background.
We reached a stop sign on the road, in the middle of nowhere. With no traffic whatsoever, the bus driver stopped for about five minutes. All the bus windows opened and the lenses sticking out made the vehicle look like a lopsided porcupine. Everybody was happy, gave the bus driver three or four cheers and a pat on the back, and we rolled off.
Later that Evening (The Man with the Mohawk)
That afternoon, a press conference had been called in which all the difficult questions concerning Friday's software problem had supposedly been answered. When Keith and I tried to obtain a videotape of the press conference, we were directed to the head of press affairs.
This guy had his head shaved into a Mohawk for every launch so he would be easily recognizable. He told us he could get cassette copies around midnightafter he had time to get some sleep.
When Keith and I returned from the shuttle tour, we got some food and talked to the various friends we had made. Later, I found myself up in the stands talking to a truly delightful lady journalist from Washington, D.C.
I decided it was more fun to stay there conversing and flirting with her than to go off and see a videotape. Keith did, however, view the tape and learned the problem was a handshaking/timing error, just as he had predicted. It was an error that showed up very rarely. If the system had been turned on from a cold start and didn't manifest the error, the error would never occur.
The latter part of the evening was passed talking to a Norwegian correspondent who had been arrested several times in the Soviet Union for taking photographs. He told us stories about going around the world on trains, and about his most recent trip to China.
During the night, many people gathered around and told stories and anecdotes to kill tome until first light showed on the horizon. At various times, some tried to make a pretense of getting some sleep... somewhere. Keith and I had obtained a pillow and an air mattress, and had a lawn chair set up in our little area.
For and hour or so, I tried to sleep. Earlier that evening it had been announced that the capability existed of launching a half hour early to avoid potentially bad weather. It was now announced the launch would be no earlier than 6:45 a.m. as the swamp cameras needed the morning light.
The Lines to the Toilets Get Long
Now, the people really started to get nervous. A lot of us had been up for several days, or had caught one night of sleep which was simply inadequate. The level of emotional commitment for the second launch was much higher than the first had been, as everyone had already experienced going down to the wire, only to be disappointed. Now, they had come back, and were very concerned about the importance of this launch.
Before the previous attempt, when the astronauts went to breakfast, the gossip was that they looked bad. It was said they had looked ashen and that commander John Young looked "scared." Although I did not see this on the monitors. So, this morning there was great interest as to what the astronauts would look like. As it turned out, the astronauts looked better than the press who were covering the event.
About this time, the lines to the toilets started getting LONG . People were definitely acknowledging they had the shakes and butterflies. Most spectators were glazed and twisted and didn't have the energy to show their emotions in more than a tightening or tensing of the face.
People also expressed concern and support for those around them, and loudly this time it would really go.
And while standing in line for the toilet, I heard the new hot rumor of the morning: The Russians were going to launch something on the twentieth anniversary of the first manned Soviet space flight.
Going Down to the Wire for the Real Thing
In the last minutes of the T-minus-20 hold, in anticipation of the hold at the 9-minute point, all the latecomers jockeyed for position. We stood in various rows by our cameras and made sure the people behind us could see. We checked all our batteries and made sure everything was running. People started to yet and scream and tried not to just up and down. We had to suppress ourselves or else we would shake up all the cameras.
When we pulled out of the hold at T-minus-9 minutes, there was a universal feeling the thing was going to go. People started to quiet down. We could hardly contain ourselves, but nobody knew a reasonable way to express the excitement.
When it finally came down to the wire, I was looking through my camera, with the seconds from the big digital sign displayed in the corner of my viewfinder.
People were quietly, not loudly, not frantically, quietly counting along with the numbers: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.... SILENCE. You could hear the BIRDS. Then you could hear the start of hundreds of motordrives and the click of shutters.
In that moment, if you have ever sinned you pretend you are forgiven. If you have ever feared anything, you believe it has gone away. If you have ever fought with anyone, for an instant, you've made the peace. Whatever the price for a moment's calm, you pay it, and wait...
When we finally saw the ignition, it wasn't so much flame at first as it was a cloud that came out of the right side of the pad. Then, there was an orange color and another huge cloud came out to the left side. The shuttle started to lift off.
The sun had been up for some time. After the overnight cold, we had taken off clothing because of the direct rays of the rising sun. I could feel the sun very distinctly on the right side of my body. But, as soon as the shuttle lifted off the pad, I could feel the heat coming from the launch at a distance of three miles. The heat was several times stronger than the sun. I could feel the shadow of my camera as I moved back and forth behind it.
When the sound of the launch reached us, it wasn't the loudness that impressed me, but the character of the sound. A solid fuel booster has a hold through its entire length the size of a garbage can. The boosters burned with sort of an organ-pipe effect. Have you ever heard the sound of a flame flapping? There was a huge modulation to the roar of the rockets, a kind of flapping sound you head with your legs and with the trunk of your body.
The boosters burned orange, while the oxy/hydrogen flame of the shuttle's main engines burned a pure glowing white with maybe a tinge of blue where it mixed with the booster exhaust. The shuttle moved very slowly.
The shuttle climbs slightly and then moves horizontally about 25 feet further away from the gantry. As it rises, you realize it is twice as high as the gantry and the flame from the boosters is still touching the pad. Now the shuttle starts to rotate and roll. As it flies away, it is upside-down with the fuel tank on the top side. You can't see the detail on TV, but through a camera you can look right up the engine nozzles and still see the details of the tank and shuttle behind.
The boosters continue to glow bright orange, with the main engines white, as the shuttle arches away on its back. It leaves behind it an incredible column of steam.
The pad became completely obscured by the cloud from hundreds of thousands of gallons of water that was dumped on the pad during the launch. As the water vaporizes to steam, it is supposed to protect the pad and dampen the sound that would destroy the shuttle and deafen the onlookers.
The shuttle arches up, on its back, and flies away downrange. You can see it for several minutes as a silver spot against the sky.
When it became clear that no one had a lens that could see it, we all moved back to the monitors. The long range camera showed the separation of the boosters, almost in slow motion. The boosters peeled off the upside-down shuttle, majestically rolled, and spun away. Within a few minutes, we heard the boosters were in the ocean. The shuttle was no longer visible.
After the launch, the spectators did not cheer or scream, they were so awe-struck by the event. People stood to bear witness to what they had seen, almost silently. Struck by the historic nature of the moment they had observed, they quietly slapped each other on the back, shook hands or hugged and kissed. They quietly attested it was the most amazing thing they had ever seen.
In that state of shock, people did no cry or break down until later when reality struck home. I saw some of the local media people, the beautiful young women reporters who could keep a straight face through anything, completely coming apart after going off-camera.
The launch was a celebration of the human spirit, a reaffirmation of our competency and effectiveness at realizing dreams. What happened today was Prometheus in reverse. Mankind had taken fire back into the sky.