If you were to ask me what I though was the most incredible experience of my life, without pause, I would say that it was watching a space shuttle launch from less than two miles away.
When I worked for the Navy as a Paints & Coatings expert, I regularly traveled to Cape Canaveral AFB to observe some paint samples we had located there in racks near the ocean as part of a decades-long exposure experiment. The last time I went to rate the paint samples coincided with a shuttle launch and our Air Force hosts at Canaveral arranged a great viewing location for us to watch the event.
There is a little spit of land just across the water (on the Canaveral side) from the shuttle launch pad at Kennedy Space Center. Some hush-hush group is housed in a large glass-faced modern office building on that bit of land and access is only granted to those with special security clearance. Much to our surprise, our hosts kindly went out of their way to get our group the needed clearance (which explained why they suddenly needed so much background information on us four weeks prior to our trip) so we could observe the shuttle from that ideal location.
The morning of the launch, we had no problems getting through the security checkpoints in our host’s official government vehicle and we proceeded to the far side of the parking lot, the farthest from the imposing “secret” building and the closest to the water. One of my colleagues removed his camera from his bag to get some pictures of the shuttle in the launch structure, when a security guard appeared (seemingly) out of the nearby bushes. After a heated discussion regarding the use of a camera so close to a classified structure (which looked like every other glass-covered office building in the world – rectangular and shiny), it was agreed to that my co-worker would only take pictures facing away from the building (and the guard watched him the whole time we were there to guarantee that fact).
So after the nearly being carted off due to the camera issue, we settled in to wait for the launch. It was a bit odd because we could only hear the birds, the bugs and the lapping of the water against the shore, not any of the announcements that you hear when watching the launch on television. We had to keep an eye on our watches and the shuttle to know when the excitement was to begin. About 10 minutes before the scheduled launch time, I turned around and there were about 50 people standing behind us (which I assume were denizens of the office building, they were certainly sneaky).
Suddenly, someone said “there it goes” and everyone looked to the launch pad. Before I could hear the roar of the engines, I saw the bright orange flames and white smoke from around the base of the shuttle. Then the noise hit. “Loud” is not the right word… the sound was totally encompassing. I could actually feel the sound waves travel through my body as the shuttle gained altitude. That sensation somehow really made me feel I was part of the launch itself. And then, far too soon, the shuttle (and the noise) were gone. It was nothing more than a bright dot up in the sky.
Until that day, people leaving earth and going into space had always been a bit unreal to me. Intellectually, I knew that it happened, but it still always just seemed like another piece of Hollywood (actually Marin County) special effects. But personally witnessing the shuttle launch changed all of that, I could not help but know I was watching (and feeling) something incredible. Truly awesome.
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