Hurtling to Space (pun intended)
When I look back on my own history of space travel, it has everything there is needed, except for actually being in space. I was born in the year when a president announced to bring a man to the moon and back to earth.
I was there when they really brought a man to the moon and safely back to earth (I am ignoring all those conspiracy theories, as you can see). Sitting in my grandparents living room and watching it on an old b/w TV.
I was there when Apollo 13 had a tragic accident. And also when a crew died in an Apollo training capsule.
Then I’ve seen the first launch of this monument made for space, the Space Shuttle. Every start they showed me on TV was as important to me as the air I need to live. And I remember the Challanger disaster as if it was yesterday. I was so sad about it and for my taste they grounded the shuttles for much too long afterwards.
Anyway, what I wanted to write about in the first place was how it happend that I’ve seen a freaking Shuttle Launch live. Not live on TV, but live sitting and freezing the crap out of me on the Cape Canaveral Causeway back in March 2001.
I was still living and working in Vienna, and I had a friend who was some kind of spontaneous. One day in Februar 2001 she said to me, I’ve got 10 days off of work in the beginning of March and we are going to America. I was flabbergasted. In one way because of the excitement, in another way, because I had lots of work to do, and stuck in a high pressure project with no room for a 10 days short notice vacation. I managed it anyway, but on the last day before leaving for America I stayed in the tea kitchen and cried for the first time ever at work, because of the pressure that I couldn’t handle anymore. Anyhow, in the end the trip was worth every tear I shed.
Days before we left, but already after we booked our flights and hotels, I discovered that we will be in America when a Shuttle Launch was scheduled on March 8th 2001. I checked the NASA Homepage for more information and found out, that we still could get tickets for watching the start live on the Causeway. Sadly there weren’t anymore tickets available for getting on the Causeway with your own car. Just tickets for bus rides to the Causeway were still available. I bought them online and had them sent to me via UPS, because this was my only possible chance to get those tickets on time for our departure. It was a close call, as everything was on that trip. Literally on the day of departure the tickets arrived. They were the last thing I packed and I can’t tell you how pleased I was that this worked out.
The trip to Atlanta itself was horror. We flew coach with Delta. They had so less space in their 777 that I felt like a sardine in a can. We also had an hour delay because they couldn’t get some cargo boxes fixed in the cargo bay. We found that one out, after arrival in Atlanta. As did many others on that flight. Because they just managed to load 1 (one) cargo box for the whole flight, the rest of the cargo was left back in Paris.
Without luggage except for the things we had on us, we picked up our rental and dived into the traffic. Which was another horror trip for me. It overwhelmed me. So many cars, so many lanes, so many signs and so many Peach Tree Somethings.
To cut it short. One bag arrived two days later and the second bag is in the computers still missing. But we got it after three days, because of the sheet of paper I put in the bag in the first place. Because all of the tags they usually put on your baggage were missing. They called us at the hotel and we hopped in the car immediately. Driving to the airport picking the bag up.
We stayed just for 4 days in Atlanta and despite the baggage problems we had a cold but fun time. On day 5 we packed the car and drove to Savannah our second vacation location. Don’t ask me why we chose Savannah. Maybe because of Forrest Gump, I can’t remember. It was March 7th 2001. One day before the scheduled Shuttle launch of STS-102 with our heroine Suzanne J. Helms preparing for her almost 6 months stay on board the ISS.
It were two very long days for me. First the drive from Atlanta to Savannah, we checked in in our hotel and tried to sleep for a while to get fit for our second leg down to Cape Canaveral. But that wasn’t possible. It was something past noon and one of our hotel neighbors played trumpet and a car parking outside started it’s alarm every time a bigger truck passed by. And hell there were a lot of big trucks. I can still remember that at one point I started to count how often the alarm sounds before it silences again. 92 frickin times. Then it went silent for a few seconds and the next truck passed by. No sleep.
We illegally packed a few blankets from the hotel, told them that we will be gone for two days and headed down to Cape Canaveral. We arrived at Cape Canaveral some time before midnight and they refused to let us in, because we were too early. They said, doors will open at 2 am and we should come back then. Nice. It was cold, it was dark, we were tired and we didn’t know what to do. We found us a parking spot at a nearby gas station and luckily they didn’t bother us. We cuddled into the blankets and tried to sleep for two hours. But as you can imagine. No way. So, we watched the clock ticking instead and at 2 am we tried again. This time with much more luck.
I can still remember those parking attendants who helped everyone to it’s parking spot doing so in T-Shirts and Shorts. It was bloody freezing outside (32F) and they ran around like it had 80F. I so didn’t understand how they could survive that.
We then had to wait another 3 hours till we could board our bus. Running around at Kennedy Space Center looking at the stones from the moon missions and many more interesting stuff. At 5 we could board our bus and they drove us out to the Causeway, where a lot of people were already waiting for the start. We saw two glimmering lights far far in the distance and assumed one of those had to be the shuttle launch pad. I was disappointed that we couldn’t get any nearer. And it was cold and the scheduled start still nearly 1 1/2 hours away. We luckily had some kind of binoculars with us, but they were really weak on magnification. So we had a hard time to actually watch during countdown. Some guys had their radios on mission control FM and we were pretty well informed on what’s going on. Because we still couldn’t believe that a) we were actually here and b) the start would be right on time as scheduled. Every other mission before was delayed due to problems with the shuttle or the weather, but not so this one.
At 6:42 am we were at T -0 and the Shuttle glided into the still dark but clear morning sky. It was breathtaking seeing it flying to the stars. Especially as the sound wave of the throttling up rockets reached our ears seconds after lift off and the airstream right after that. That’s a thing you can’t hear and feel on TV and that’s the thing why I am so glad that after all we had endured it worked all out in the end.
After being up with no sleep at all for 24 hours, we headed back with the bus to Kennedy Space Center, strolled around till we had seen everything around noon (including the memorial wall, the Apollo/Saturn V Rockets and the Museum Space Shuttle “Explorer” and my first two 3D IMAX movies) and decided (after buying freeze dried strawberries and ice) we wanna see a theme park in Orlando. We made it to the Universal Studios Florida. We rode every ride. The best one back then was “Back to the future” with its small cars for like 6 or 8 people and a ride I haven’t experienced before and never after. We did this thing three times in a row, and after more than 30 hours of no sleep you can imagine how I felt. I was knocked over.
And guess what. I even tried to drive back to Savannah. But I was so tired, I just managed to find us the nearest motel. And we were really lucky on that. Because of the Daytona Beach Bike Week every single room in a 100 miles radius around Daytona Beach was booked. We got the last available room for the night, because someone else cancelled on short notice. They even offered us freshly home made cookies and cake, but we didn’t manage to stay awake for another 30 minutes. That night I had my deepest sleep ever.
And today I remembered all that, because of Wil Wheton and especially because of the last Space Shuttle start of Atlantis. The one I have seen was Discovery. Which has it’s final flight on September 16th 2010 (STS-133).
