the 28 year promise
February 2010
On the morning of 12th April 1981, the Space Shuttle
was scheduled to make its maiden flight. And I was
going to school.
No other spacecraft had ever flown for the first time with astronauts or cosmonauts aboard, and no spacecraft had ever been designed to be reused. The flight of Space Transportation System (STS) 1 promised to usher in a new era of low-cost, fast turnaround space travel. And I was going to be stuck in a maths lesson with Miss Austin, a teacher renowned for not being swayed from the tedium of arithmetic.
My school had a single television set, a treasured and rarely seen artefact secured in a wooden cupboard by a padlock that looked as though it had previously seen service in the closing scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I looked at my black resin Casio watch and realised that I had less than 60 minutes to persuade Miss Austin to halt her lesson, unlock the chest, retrieve the monitor and turn it on in the classroom so that my class could watch the Orbiter Columbia lift-off from Pad 39a – the pad which launched every Saturn V that landed on the moon – at Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The chance of my stars aligning and achieving all of these things seemed as remote as the moon. Still, if Commander John Young and Pilot Robert Crippen had the audacity to step aboard an unproven rocket, I would find the courage to speak to Miss Austin.
I can’t remember what I said, but my powers of persuasion were sufficient to win the day. To the surprise and delight of every young man in the class the television set was duly wheeled in. I sat in rapt suspense as the voice from Launch Control informed us that Columbia was 60, then 30, then 10 seconds away from launch. Finally, she rose from the ground, the class erupted into spontaneous applause, and I vowed that one day I would see a Shuttle launch from the Cape.
I’m good at keeping promises. But some take longer than others. Mated to its external fuel tank and twin solid rocket boosters, the Orbiter Endeavour had been anchored to Pad 39a for a month, waiting for its scheduled lift-off time of 0439hrs on February 7th 2010. I’d been waiting for nearly three decades.
Along with several thousand other visitors, I had stood patiently in line at the entrance to the Kennedy Space Centre (KSC) the previous evening, clutching my ticket to watch the 130th launch of the Space Shuttle from the Causeway, the closest point that non-NASA employees can get to the pad. It proved to be a forlorn wait.
For a Shuttle to launch there must be acceptable weather at the Cape and at one of three abort landing sites in Europe. In the final two hours before launch, weather at the Cape deteriorated from 80% to 30%. With just a few minutes to go before the 10 minute launch window was reached, the weather was considered ‘too dynamic’ and the launch was scrubbed. I was disappointed but it must have been so much harder for the crew. Having once turned back from the summit of Everest just 1000 vertical feet from the summit because of poor weather, I had an inkling of how frustrated he seven astronauts aboard Endeavour would be feeling.
The evening of February 7th felt like Groundhog Day. With the launch re-scheduled for 0414hrs the next morning, there were fewer people at KSC than 24 hours previously, and the air of excitement from the previous night had evaporated with the news that with five hours to lift-off there was only a 60% chance of the weather being given a green light. Besides, we were dog tired. Waiting for a successful lift-off is like an alpine start without the snow or crampons.
To kill time, I rode the Shuttle Launch Experience, where I learnt about the ‘twang’ that astronauts feel as the Orbiter rocks on the pad after the restraints are withdrawn, and how the Shuttle’s main engines generate the same thrust as more than seven Boeing 747s. And that’s before the twin solid rocket boosters (SRBs) are lit. When those two devices ignite you’re taking off whether you want to or not as they cannot be shut down.
At 3am, I hopped aboard a bus to the Causeway more out of a sense of duty than expectation. Then, with four minutes to go before the launch window opened, news came through that the weather was expected to be ‘Go’ at launch.
Finally, that familiar voice from Launch Control came over the speakers, announcing that Endeavour was 60, then 30, then 10 seconds away from launch. I peered through my binoculars and caught myself trembling as I realised this wasn’t a television or web relay. This was the real thing. The fate of Commander George Zamka and his crew now depended upon the thousands of hours that had been poured into preparing Endeavour for this moment by NASA employees and contractors.
At the moment of lift-off, anyone standing 400 feet or less from the pad would be vaporised by the blast from the SRBs. At 4000 feet the sound generated by the Shuttle would kill you. But at six miles, when the pad was consumed by a billowing satin plume that reminded me of the clouds that boil up above the Chamonix Valley after several days of sultry weather in the French Alps, there was only silence.
Just when I began to wonder if Endeavour was still tethered to the Earth, the burnt orange tip of the external tank (ET) emerged through the maelstrom, followed a moment later by the piggy-backing white and black body of Endeavour. The Shuttle rose painfully slowly, like a recalcitrant teenager crawling out of bed on a school morning. I couldn’t believe that a vehicle so monstrous and so powerful could rise so gently. And so quietly. For there was still no sound. It was like watching the greatest film ever made with the volume off. Finally, Endeavour’s tail fin cleared the tower and I was momentarily blinded by the twin beams of intense white light emanating from the SRBs.
I ripped the binoculars away from my eyes and squinted as Endeavour rose serenely into the sky, turning night into day as she began her characteristic roll. Only then did the first wave of noise pass through the multitude gathered at the Cape. I’d always known that light travels faster than sound but until that moment the difference between the two mediums had never resonated with me. Now that I have seen, heard and felt the difference, I appreciate why creating a vehicle capable of travelling at the speed of light remains a fantasy for now, and why without it our dreams of inter-galactic travel are on hold.
As Endeavour gathered pace to 3000 miles per hour, its engines throttled back at a stage in the launch known as maximum dynamic pressure (Max-Q) to prevent the Orbiter from being crushed by the pressure like a tin can in a compactor. This was the moment in January 1986 that an O-ring on one of Challenger’s SRBs had failed. Commander Charlie Bolden, who flew four Shuttle missions and who is NASA’s current Administrator, says that this is the moment in each flight when every astronaut and NASA employee pauses to remember the crew of STS-51-L. Those of us on the Causeway held our collective breath too.
Moments later, Endeavour returned to full power and the SRBs delivered a final, decisive punch to send the Orbiter into space with the last of their fuel. As darkness began to reclaim the Cape and Endeavour started to take on the appearance of a distant star, I put the binoculars to my eyes for the final time and watched as she discarded her spent boosters. They fell towards Earth like two exhausted fireworks.
Before lift-off, I’d imagined shouting “Go Endeavour, Go” as STS-130 left Pad 39a. Instead, I watched the entire episode with a mixture of awe and trepidation. When eventually I did speak, all I could manage were whispering words of encouragement as Endeavour screamed into the void. No book, no photograph, no film can do justice to the experience of watching a manned space launch. For me, space flight is the ultimate expression of the human race’s desire to extend the boundaries of what is possible, to make new discoveries, and to inspire the next generation of young people to, in Tennyson’s words, “To strive, to seek, and not to yield.”
Now Endeavour is in orbit, mated to the International Space Station. When she returns there will be only four more Shuttle missions before the retirement of the fleet and the apparent end of NASA’s manned space missions. How long will it be before the organisation launches a new a space vehicle capable of taking humans into orbit, back to the Moon, and beyond?
No other spacecraft had ever flown for the first time with astronauts or cosmonauts aboard, and no spacecraft had ever been designed to be reused. The flight of Space Transportation System (STS) 1 promised to usher in a new era of low-cost, fast turnaround space travel. And I was going to be stuck in a maths lesson with Miss Austin, a teacher renowned for not being swayed from the tedium of arithmetic.
My school had a single television set, a treasured and rarely seen artefact secured in a wooden cupboard by a padlock that looked as though it had previously seen service in the closing scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I looked at my black resin Casio watch and realised that I had less than 60 minutes to persuade Miss Austin to halt her lesson, unlock the chest, retrieve the monitor and turn it on in the classroom so that my class could watch the Orbiter Columbia lift-off from Pad 39a – the pad which launched every Saturn V that landed on the moon – at Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The chance of my stars aligning and achieving all of these things seemed as remote as the moon. Still, if Commander John Young and Pilot Robert Crippen had the audacity to step aboard an unproven rocket, I would find the courage to speak to Miss Austin.
I can’t remember what I said, but my powers of persuasion were sufficient to win the day. To the surprise and delight of every young man in the class the television set was duly wheeled in. I sat in rapt suspense as the voice from Launch Control informed us that Columbia was 60, then 30, then 10 seconds away from launch. Finally, she rose from the ground, the class erupted into spontaneous applause, and I vowed that one day I would see a Shuttle launch from the Cape.
I’m good at keeping promises. But some take longer than others. Mated to its external fuel tank and twin solid rocket boosters, the Orbiter Endeavour had been anchored to Pad 39a for a month, waiting for its scheduled lift-off time of 0439hrs on February 7th 2010. I’d been waiting for nearly three decades.
Along with several thousand other visitors, I had stood patiently in line at the entrance to the Kennedy Space Centre (KSC) the previous evening, clutching my ticket to watch the 130th launch of the Space Shuttle from the Causeway, the closest point that non-NASA employees can get to the pad. It proved to be a forlorn wait.
For a Shuttle to launch there must be acceptable weather at the Cape and at one of three abort landing sites in Europe. In the final two hours before launch, weather at the Cape deteriorated from 80% to 30%. With just a few minutes to go before the 10 minute launch window was reached, the weather was considered ‘too dynamic’ and the launch was scrubbed. I was disappointed but it must have been so much harder for the crew. Having once turned back from the summit of Everest just 1000 vertical feet from the summit because of poor weather, I had an inkling of how frustrated he seven astronauts aboard Endeavour would be feeling.
The evening of February 7th felt like Groundhog Day. With the launch re-scheduled for 0414hrs the next morning, there were fewer people at KSC than 24 hours previously, and the air of excitement from the previous night had evaporated with the news that with five hours to lift-off there was only a 60% chance of the weather being given a green light. Besides, we were dog tired. Waiting for a successful lift-off is like an alpine start without the snow or crampons.
To kill time, I rode the Shuttle Launch Experience, where I learnt about the ‘twang’ that astronauts feel as the Orbiter rocks on the pad after the restraints are withdrawn, and how the Shuttle’s main engines generate the same thrust as more than seven Boeing 747s. And that’s before the twin solid rocket boosters (SRBs) are lit. When those two devices ignite you’re taking off whether you want to or not as they cannot be shut down.
At 3am, I hopped aboard a bus to the Causeway more out of a sense of duty than expectation. Then, with four minutes to go before the launch window opened, news came through that the weather was expected to be ‘Go’ at launch.
Finally, that familiar voice from Launch Control came over the speakers, announcing that Endeavour was 60, then 30, then 10 seconds away from launch. I peered through my binoculars and caught myself trembling as I realised this wasn’t a television or web relay. This was the real thing. The fate of Commander George Zamka and his crew now depended upon the thousands of hours that had been poured into preparing Endeavour for this moment by NASA employees and contractors.
At the moment of lift-off, anyone standing 400 feet or less from the pad would be vaporised by the blast from the SRBs. At 4000 feet the sound generated by the Shuttle would kill you. But at six miles, when the pad was consumed by a billowing satin plume that reminded me of the clouds that boil up above the Chamonix Valley after several days of sultry weather in the French Alps, there was only silence.
Just when I began to wonder if Endeavour was still tethered to the Earth, the burnt orange tip of the external tank (ET) emerged through the maelstrom, followed a moment later by the piggy-backing white and black body of Endeavour. The Shuttle rose painfully slowly, like a recalcitrant teenager crawling out of bed on a school morning. I couldn’t believe that a vehicle so monstrous and so powerful could rise so gently. And so quietly. For there was still no sound. It was like watching the greatest film ever made with the volume off. Finally, Endeavour’s tail fin cleared the tower and I was momentarily blinded by the twin beams of intense white light emanating from the SRBs.
I ripped the binoculars away from my eyes and squinted as Endeavour rose serenely into the sky, turning night into day as she began her characteristic roll. Only then did the first wave of noise pass through the multitude gathered at the Cape. I’d always known that light travels faster than sound but until that moment the difference between the two mediums had never resonated with me. Now that I have seen, heard and felt the difference, I appreciate why creating a vehicle capable of travelling at the speed of light remains a fantasy for now, and why without it our dreams of inter-galactic travel are on hold.
As Endeavour gathered pace to 3000 miles per hour, its engines throttled back at a stage in the launch known as maximum dynamic pressure (Max-Q) to prevent the Orbiter from being crushed by the pressure like a tin can in a compactor. This was the moment in January 1986 that an O-ring on one of Challenger’s SRBs had failed. Commander Charlie Bolden, who flew four Shuttle missions and who is NASA’s current Administrator, says that this is the moment in each flight when every astronaut and NASA employee pauses to remember the crew of STS-51-L. Those of us on the Causeway held our collective breath too.
Moments later, Endeavour returned to full power and the SRBs delivered a final, decisive punch to send the Orbiter into space with the last of their fuel. As darkness began to reclaim the Cape and Endeavour started to take on the appearance of a distant star, I put the binoculars to my eyes for the final time and watched as she discarded her spent boosters. They fell towards Earth like two exhausted fireworks.
Before lift-off, I’d imagined shouting “Go Endeavour, Go” as STS-130 left Pad 39a. Instead, I watched the entire episode with a mixture of awe and trepidation. When eventually I did speak, all I could manage were whispering words of encouragement as Endeavour screamed into the void. No book, no photograph, no film can do justice to the experience of watching a manned space launch. For me, space flight is the ultimate expression of the human race’s desire to extend the boundaries of what is possible, to make new discoveries, and to inspire the next generation of young people to, in Tennyson’s words, “To strive, to seek, and not to yield.”
Now Endeavour is in orbit, mated to the International Space Station. When she returns there will be only four more Shuttle missions before the retirement of the fleet and the apparent end of NASA’s manned space missions. How long will it be before the organisation launches a new a space vehicle capable of taking humans into orbit, back to the Moon, and beyond?