Space Shuttle Launch

Like a dummy, I decided to wait until the last minute to book a hotel...

GOOD GRIEF!

Even the Best Westerns are priced in the $120 per night range... AND THAT INCLUDES THE ROACHES!

👿

I am gonna see if I can watch COPS Orlando to find some crack house hotels. They have to be cheap...

{DOU} Nightwalker wrote: Any chance if you video it of posting it? My son would love to see it and I am not gonna get trip to US to take him to see it. 😈

Here is the link to the webcast:

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/

It really looks like TV if your connection is fast enough. If you see a fat, bald guy streaking across the launchpad... Just look away 😮

It is scheduled to lift off Wednesday, Aug 8th around 6:30 PM. I think that is 11:30 PM GMT.

Thanks Jarg we'll take a look. 😈

Cool. I've been to the Kennedy Space center, went there on my birthday in 2002. The Saturn Rocket is somthing else Jarg, worth the trip just for that 🙂 I didn't get to see a launch though, are you taking a camera? although it will be broadcast, it would be good to see it via Jargvision.

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I do plan on taking the camera tomorrow. Only for stills and only right up until launch. After lift off, I just plan on standing there taking it all in.

I have the camera's resolution set for 3648x2048 Widescreen. This should be pretty good but I may want to change it to get better closeups. 6 miles away will require a lot of cropping and Photoshopping.

As a side note, ya gotta love Florida. When I arrived at mt hotel, there was a spider 23rds the size of my hand on the wall. I can not figure out how to send it to my laptop through Bluetooth from my cell. Oh well..

Well, I am home. I learned three important lessons:

1. The shuttle is incredible. Even at 6 miles, the thunderous roar from the rockets shook your chest. When you see it on TV, you do not get a sense of just how fast this thing is moving. For example, when the two solid rocket boosters eject, the thing is not much more than a dot in the sky. You can still see them, but just.

2. I will NEVER visit Florida in August when it is 100+ degrees ever again.

3. Just from my observation, the ratio of Americans to non-Americans (European, Asian) was about 60/40. This surprised me. I met many folks from England there.

The American group standing right beside me were friends with the Commander of the Endeavour, Scott Kelly. They were making a home video of the launch. That was cool.

It was very hazy and difficult to get good pictures. I have cropped one down and re-sized it so be warned.

The person's fist that you see is one of Commander Kelly's friends.

Almost missed it with that arm in the way 😀

I wished that I had been further back to capture everyone watching this.

BTW, there are only 15 more launches before the shuttle is retired. It is worth it.

The SRB's last 120 seconds. They're jettisoned at 24 miles altitude and approximately 90 miles downrange. (You do the math, I think the thing is doing a little over 200 mph by the time it clears the tower.

Some interesting facts I googled:

The Space Shuttle uses the largest solid rocket motors ever built and flown. Each reusable booster contains 1.1 million pounds (453,600 kilograms) of propellant, in the form of a hard, rubbery substance with a consistency like that of the eraser on a pencil. The four center segments are the ones containing propellant. The uppermost one has a star-shaped, hollow channel in the center, extending from the top to about two thirds of the way down, where it gradually rounds out until the channel assumes the form of a cylinder. This opening connects to a similar cylindrical hole through the center of the second through fourth segments. When ignited, the propellant burns on all exposed surfaces, from top to bottom of all four segments. Since the star-shaped channel provides more exposed surface than the simple cylinder in the lower three segments, the total thrust is greatest at liftoff, and gradually decreases as the points of the star burn away, until that channel also becomes cylindrical in shape. The propellant in the star-shaped segment is also thicker than that in the other three.

A solid propellant always contains its own oxygen supply. The oxidizer in the Shuttle solids is ammonium perchlorate, which forms 69.93 percent of the mixture. The fuel is a form of powdered aluminum (16 percent), with an iron oxidizer powder (0.07) as a catalyst. The binder that holds the mixture together is polybutadiene acrylic acid acrylonitrile (12.04 percent). In addition, the mixture contains an epoxy-curing agent (1.96 percent). The binder and epoxy also burn as fuel, adding thrust.

The specific impulse of the Space Shuttle solid rocket booster propellant is 242 seconds at sea level and 268.6 seconds in a vacuum

The Space Shuttle weighs 165,000 pounds empty. Its external tank weighs 78,100 pounds empty and its two solid rocket boosters weigh 185,000 pounds empty each. Each solid rocket booster holds 1.1 million pounds of fuel. The external tank holds 143,000 gallons of liquid oxygen (1,359,000 pounds) and 383,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen (226,000 pounds). The fuel weighs almost 20 times more than the Shuttle. At launch, the Shuttle, external tank, solid rocket boosters and all the fuel combined has a total weight of 4.4 million pounds. The Shuttle can also carry a 65,000 payload.

The Space Shuttle's three main engines and two solid rocket boosters generate some 7.3 million pounds (3.3 million kilograms) of thrust at liftoff.

Each of the Shuttle's solid rocket motors burns 5 tons (5,080 kilograms) of propellant per second, a total of 1.1 million pounds (500,000 kilograms) in 120 seconds. The speed of the gases exiting the nozzle is more than 6,000 miles (9,656 kilometers) per hour, about five times the speed of sound or three times the speed of a high-powered rifle bullet. The plume of flame ranges up to 500 feet (152 meters) long.

After the solid rockets are jettisoned, the main engines provide thrust which accelerates the Shuttle from 4,828 kilometers per hour (3,000 mph) to over 27,358 kilometers per hour (17,000 mph) in just six minutes to reach orbit. They create a combined maximum thrust of more than 1.2 million pounds.

You are very lucky. (Even at 100 degrees in Florida.)

I have worked on the machines that made the SRB's and the SSME's but I have never seen a launch.

Incidentally, when you see a real shuttle up close, the tiles on the skin look like styrofoam or styrene plastic, imagine a full size styrene model of the shuttle and that's what the texture looks like up close. The grey and black on the nose looks like paint but it's not. It literally looks like a painted Testor's model. 🙂

Launch Schedule:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/iss_manifest.html

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Qwazy. If you get the chance, GO! You will not regret or forget it. I am even planning on going to the launch in February.

I REALLY want to see a night launch, and if there is one, I will be headed down there again.

Razor. AWESOME pic! I stole it and will use it 😀

Thank you!

http://picasaweb.google.com/thejargonaut1/NASA2007

Looks like it was an excellent trip. We might go to Oct. 20 launch. I will have some vacation time coming about that time of year.

Once again, Thanks for the pic Razor. EVERYONE gets a kick out of it!

Check out this launch vid. It is from the cameras on the SRBs. You can see stuff falling off of the shuttle during launch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTxesVCpAoQ

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I am going back 😀

I am HOPING that this one goes off on time.

Date: March 11 +

Mission: STS-123

Launch Vehicle: Space Shuttle Endeavour

Launch Site: Kennedy Space Center - Launch Pad 39A

Launch Time: 2:31 a.m. EDT

Description: Mission STS-123 on Space Shuttle Endeavour will deliver the pressurized section of the Kibo Japanese Experiment Logistics Module (ELM-PS) on the twenty-fifth mission to the International Space Station.

A night launch will be spectacular!