Now back in central Florida, I was ready for another shot at back to back space shuttle launches. Last year, in approximately the same situation, at series of technical issues foiled my attempt to see the STS-92 launch right after seeing the STS-106 launch. Just last month, I'd seen both shuttle launch pads occupied and the STS-104 launch and now I was hoping to see the second launch pad cleared with the STS-105 launch.
The launch was set for about 5:40 pm on August 9, which meant that all the events were going to occur during regular hours. I drove out to the visitor complex at around 1 pm, but got to the guard gate a little early, so I got to wait in the Florida afternoon soup along with dozens of other people in cars. This was the first launch attempt I'd seen from the closer launch pad, Pad 39A, so it was interesting to finally see a shuttle waiting for launch on that pad. I was on one of the first buses that got out to the viewing site at around 2:30 pm. The wind was blowing from the ocean to the east onshore and there was one area of large thunderstorms off to the northwest:
This wouldn't be a problem unless the storms were moving right at us. After about half an hour, I looked again. The storms were moving right at us. And they were building. By 4 pm, we could see lightning in the storms as they moved closer and the sky darkened. The sea breeze was only effective in holding the storms up when they got pretty much right over the space center area. By 5 pm, the consensus in the area among "regulars" was that the launch was going to be scrubbed, which happened probably 10-15 minutes later. In the confusion of all the cars and buses leaving, it ended up taking probably two and a half hours to get back to the hotel from the visitor's complex. One good thing that happened was that we were given tickets to the launch attempt scheduled for the next day. The bad news was that the weather was supposed to be worse. And it was supposedly "good" on this day.
Actually, I thought this was a good omen; I'd seen shuttles launched the day after a scrub when the weather was supposed to be worse. In reality, everyone, including the meteorologists, would have to wait to see what the weather would be like.
The launch was rescheduled for about 5:15 pm on August 10. Everything proceeded smoothly and I got back out to the viewing site at around 3 pm. The weather was much better. We watched thunderstorms much farther west, which tended to dissipate over time. The weather looked good until about 4:30 pm when the countdown commentator told us about a large cloud mass approaching from the south. It was hard to see it, but it was an issue and NASA decided to move the launch up five minutes to 5:10 pm. But with that, everything was go and I got ready to take pictures and video of the launch.
I ended up getting much better video than still pictures. Here are the two pictures I got:
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What was very impressive after having seen four previous launches from the farther pad was the sound. The shuttle was about six miles away from us when it lifted off, which was about two miles closer than any other launch I'd seen. When the sound arrived, it was louder and you could really feel it. The sound was spectacular and I'd have to recommend that anyone traveling to see a launch try to go to one scheduled to launch from Pad 39A.
Update: a DivX clip of camcorder video of the STS-105 launch is available from the InsideKSC website.
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Original Post: 28 August 2001
Last Revised: 25 May 2003
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