Alright for those who dont know, I'm a space enthusiast. Yeah lets get back and write some boring stuff "AMBITIONS". I had like 3 ambitions. First I wanted to be a test driver for the super car companies, second aerospace engineer, third astronaut. Guess what I ended up being a couch potato starring at the laptop. The glorified software engineer.
Anyways end of digression back to the point "SPACE". I used to follow the rocket launches, Space station build, Mars landing etc and always wished to see a rocket launch live. Luckily I'm in Florida and the Kennedy Space Center is like 2.5hrs drive from my place, they had a shuttle launch (Mission STS 132) scheduled last Friday and its summer vacation I dont have any classes.
We ( 5 of us ) decided to head to flag off the shuttle. Augmenting the excitement we got a Pontiac G6 with 3.5L V6 monster under the hood.
We started at 11am. Had an awesome drive till Orlando other than annoying toll booths on the highway. WTF. America is so rich still toll !!. Anyways we took a short break at Orlando at Mcd. The Cape Canaveral launch pad is like 40 mts drive from Orlando. We had a 1 hour buffer. Then comes the traffic. I lived in bangalore for 4 years and I have seen worse. At least here it moves. But still we thought we r gonna miss the launch. After 30 mts the traffic got less and I used my Indian driving experience, floored the gas pedal to 95-100mph along with crazy lane changes . Thank God I guess cops went for the launch as well.
Yeah we reached the river were most of the people camp for watching the shuttle launch. The place is like 3-4 miles from launch pad. We asked a guy when is it gonna lift off. He said "Dude u've got 15 seconds". Oh boy that could have been a near miss. The final count down begins 10, 8 ,7 ....1, lift off. Its the best thing I have ever seen. Two long flames from the solid rocket boosters and short flames from shuttle engines. In 10 seconds from lift off we could feel the sonic boom. The cars that parked were kinda vibrating. Well here are some pics. We didn't click the lift off as we didn't wanna miss the initial show.
Seeing all this I got jealous of the astronauts who are in the shuttle. I felt as if they are looking at me and saying What the heck are you doing down there you have better things to do !!. Oh yeah i can do better things. Hey astronaut r u seeing, You are floating at 13000mph.. I'm sitting idle, enjoying the beach breeze and gravity and I'm gonna get "high" soon !!
