my cousins

we had lunch at this little place off highway 520.  we all had something fried.  they had some shrimp.  i had some gator.  pictured are lowell, alice, jill, and me waiting for the fried goodness to arrive.  this was our first time getting together after they delayed the sunday morning launch.

we met up again on monday after they finally got the fuse lit on endeavour.  we were much more tired the second time around after being up for two nights and not getting all the sleep we needed in between.  nevertheless, it was good to hang out with family.  lowell, alice, and i took a drive down florida 1A1 (atlantic avenue) from cocoa beach past patrick air force base and into a bit of satellite beach.  lowell pointed out what was around back in days of nasa when the moon landing was still the goal.  many of the places he showed me i’ve been reading about in the right stuff.  as with all beach locations, it has been built up much more than it was when alan shepherd and john glenn were being jettisoned into space on rockets.

i’ve uploaded a few photos of the launch that morning to my flickr account tagged “sts-130.” the video turned out the best on my attempts to capture the launch, but those are what i have.  of course, nasa has the best pics in the world for these things.  incredible angles of the launch.  nasa’s collection of photos of the launch, which again doesn’t do the actual site justice. i credit nasa with this image of the launch which the closest i could find to how it actually looked if you had been there.  it comes from nasa’s site, but i couldn’t seem to locate it again for a link.

this launch was heavily attended as it is the final night launch. and the final shuttle launch in may will also likely have a record nunber of witnesses. (i can’t imagine the traffic for that crowd.) the astronaut hall of fame was filled up early on sunday morning only to have the launch scrubbed. they honored the tickets purchased for the next morning’s launch, but we got “upgraded” to watch the launch at kennedy space center (ksc). that’s a closer spot than the hall of fame!

i surmise many who attended last night wouldn’t make it the monday morning as many have work and school on monday. but being back at ksc was definitely exciting! i had considered visiting on monday before they rescheduled the launch. it was also rare to see ksc after dark. the mirror memorial was lit up like you can only see at night.  the whole complex was up and running as if it were a normal day.

about an hour before t-zero, i set up my tripod near the shuttle simulation building.  many had camped out spaces in that area already.  more probably would have if it weren’t so cold outside.  there were cautionary conditions again monday morning as we had on sunday morning, but things cleared up enough to move things ahead.

nothing beats the spectacular scene of a night launch! it was definitely worth the trip!  i captured the launch on video however i must state that this presentation pales in comparison to seeing the sky as bright as day when it took off.  it was like daylight, like watching the sun rise very quickly.  truly amazing!

my mom has a cousin whose daughter, jill, is the engineering branch chief in the aircraft operations division at johnson space center.  in 1994, she was considered as an astronaut candidate.  but her work with the t-38s is more notable.  she helped upgrade the avionics to these aircrafts in the early 1990s.  you can read more about this and the t-38s in the june 2008 edition of the johnson space center newsletter, “roundup” [pdf].  (the pdf is a better format for reading.)  nasa tv has a clip (on youtube) of the dress rehearsal of the astronauts for sts-130.  the jets in the beginning of this video are t-38s.

with someone from nasa twittering about the shuttle launches and everyone else in the virtual world responding and posting tweets of their own, you can follow an interesting stream of chatter about the sts-130 launch at twitter’s search page.

you can watch a time lapse account of the shuttle endeavour being rolled out from the vab to the pad.  four hours shortened to to less than three minutes.

i had mentioned this to a friend of mine who did a little research on the web about this fact and found that there is a big deal about cherries and melatonin.  a simple google search gave me a site with this quote (source choosecherries.com):

Cherries are one of the few known food sources of melatonin, a potent antioxidant produced naturally by the body’s pineal gland that helps regulate biorhythm and natural sleep patterns.  Scientists have found melatonin-rich tart cherries (commonly enjoyed as dried, frozen, juice or concentrate) contain more of this powerful antioxidant than what is normally produced by the body.  Eating cherries can be a natural way to boost your body’s melatonin levels to hasten sleep and ease jet lag.

i’ll have to give this a try when i fly across time zones next time.  another article at msnbc.com says the same thing.  follow this link for the nutrition four-one-one:  www.nutritiondata.com/facts/.

as for regular sleep patterns, i am planning on trying this out for a while to see how my body adjusts.

the second movie (”space station 3-d”) was about the construction of the international space station.  from the beginning pieces constructed to the second crew who lived on the station, we heard from the astronauts about their experiences of living on the space station.  the movie is not current as many more pieces have been added in the past ten years.

next, i got to experience what it was like to be in the shuttle on a launch.  with the absence of the g-forces, it was exactly like a launch.  well, no, i don’t know that for certain as i’ve never been in a real shuttle launch.  they rotate you until you are sitting on your back facing upwards.  when you launch, they simulate the shaking and rumbling of the cabin.  it was a fun experience, even the last bit that leaves you feeling weightless.

i also visited a museum of the early years of the work to achieve the goal of putting man on the moon.  the mercury and gemini programs were the testing grounds for the aapollo missions.  each mission was progress toward the ultimate goal of what the apollo 7 mission finally reached.

i walked through the rocket garden of the titan rockets.

the final imax movie i saw on imax was the latest star trek movie.  it seemed so appropriate to see that movie at ksc.  that was the best conclusion i could have to three days of a space related vacation this has been.

the tour also took us out to view launch pad 39A, from where atlantis launched just the day before.  in the distance, you could see the shuttle endeavour sitting on pad 39B ready for a rescue mission if necessary.  the reason for the rescue contingent is that the hubble is in a higher and different orbit than the iss.  were a problem to arise, there wouldn’t be enough resources for the iss to be a rescue option.

we saw the landing strip, which is so long you cannot stand on one end and see the other end as it follows the curvature of the earth.

as part of the tour, we were dropped off at the apollo/saturn v center where the history of the apollo and gemini missions were explained.  we saw the mission room including the actual equipment as it was when they originally used.  a replica of the apollo vehicle which is the saturn 5 rockets, the lunar and command modules, and all parts in between.  each portion of the apollo system and mission was detailed.

another stop on this tour included information about the international space station.  we walked through portions of the modules and visited the ready room where new modules being sent to the iss are tested for compatability and assembled for delivery.  we saw some of the japanese engineers who were getting ready to leave after delivering their next installment for the iss.  we also saw them testing and setting up another module for a future addition to the space station.

along with a friend and her parents, we camped out on side of SR-528 about a mile from the banana river drive exit about three and a half hours to get a good spot, which we did.  we realized we had a clear view of endeavour while atlantis was hidden behind some trees on a small island.  (i shifted my location to get some pictures of the initial srb ignition.)  i was still quite a ways away to get some very detailed shots.

i found out while on the tours of kennedy that i could have purchased tickets for the launch which would have put me significantly closer.  if i decide to attend another launch, i will indeed purchase those tickets.

of course, the time it takes to leave the pad to reach orbit is just around two minutes (two incredible minutes), the launch was over very quickly.  two hundred and twenty hours for two minutes worth of watching.  yes, it was worth it.

i recorded the launch on my tivo covered by one of my high def channels.  not only did i get to be there to see the launch in person, i got to see all the close up shot provided by nasa in high definition awesomeness.  the only way to beat that is to actually be either in the launch control room or on the shuttle itself.

my geeked interest in space/nasa has been hightened lately by the past several shuttle launches (and nasa tv) which provides great coverage of the launches, landings, and missions including activity on the international space station.  no news agency has better footage of the inner workings of nasa.

now, news from space can be feed directly to anyone subscribing to mike massimino’s twitter account.  in this computerworld article,astro_mike will be sharing his activities while on mission for hubble maintenance/upgrades.  he only has 64 tweets under his belt yet over 140,000 followers.  that’s a heck of a lot.  this twitter experiment/experience will be nice added coverage to the nasa tv coverage.  it also means that if you can’t stream the video, you can at least keep up with the mini-messages from time to time.

as gmoney, one of my colleagues, joked, we’ll see a tweet along the lines of, “it’s full of stars!”

shuttle launch (as seen on nasa tv) from mark mcintyre on vimeo.