All us shuttle viewers saw the opposite of all the problems of the previous night. I had to go back out to the space center to get another launch ticket and even being keyed up to see the launch, I was beginning to lose my battle with Mr. Drowsy. Here's a self-portrait waiting to go out to the viewing site, taken just before I fell asleep for about half an hour.
The weather was calm all night, with no thunderstorms. (It's unusual to see two days of the same weather in Florida.) There were no last second problems. And we had an even better vantage point for the launch -- in the same area, albeit, but we could see almost the whole vehicle. The countdown was held up for an extra 7 minutes at the T-20 minute hold, but after that everything went on schedule. Through binoculars we could see the shuttle main engines start with red flashes beginning at T-6.6 seconds. The vehicle was then obscured by its own exhaust. The solid rocket boosters ignited, causing the exhaust cloud to glow and then the vehicle rose up above the cloud and suddenly night was day. The light was incredibly brilliant -- rivalling the sun -- and we could now clearly see the ground haze that was around us. I got the impression of all of us being in a big white room with the shuttle as it lifted off.
As with the last launch I attended, we saw all this in quiet (aside from the cheering from the crowd) for several seconds and then the sound hit us. It seemed louder this time, probably due to the ground haze. I could feel the staccato rumbling in my chest better this time. Another treat was that the trajectory for this launch was different. For the last launch, the shuttle took off to the northeast, kind of away from us. Today, the shuttle took off due east, making it appear to me that it was actually flying by us, even though we were well south of the pad.
I took a several pictures this time as I did last time, but I wanted to watch a little more this time, so I quit before the solid rocket boosters burned out and separated. I brought binoculars with me, which allowed me to see the booster separation and then follow the orbiter/external tank as it "went uphill."
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Normally, shuttle launches (also known as "ascents") are very smooth and it's not critical to hear the communications between the crew and Mission Control in Texas. Wouldn't you know it, there was an electrical failure five seconds after liftoff, which caused a loss of redundancy and a lot of communication between the commander and Mission Control...which I couldn't hear particularly well with all the cheering and chatter going on. Fortunately, the failure only caused a loss in redundancy, as opposed to losing systems themselves. (When I say 'losing,' I mean a loss of performance. Losing an engine means that it shutdown early; losing a computer means that it stopped working.)
At about one minute after liftoff, I heard the "go at throttle up" call, which meant that despite the problems, the vehicle was still good to continue into orbit.
We followed the glow from the main engines for about 5-6 minutes after liftoff and then we were once again herded onto buses and brought back to the Visitor's Complex, much happier than the night before.
And then to top it all off, the traffic was strangely light -- much better than rush hour-style traffic. I was back in my hotel room less than an hour after liftoff, so I could wash off the normal coating of sweat (which seems to work like mosquito repellant for me; perhaps I just reek) and beat up that sack.
Last Revised: 23 July 1999
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