Launch

Arose at 5:30 (then 5:40 and eventually at 5:51) to get the kids out the door and headed to watch the launch. We drove around a bit but found a nice dock on the north side of Cape Canaveral (the town, not the actual cape itself) and stood and watched it with about 20 other folks. Drew was wrapped in his blanket, and MK and I were in jeans, and it was a nice early morning adventure.

We came back to the hotel and now the kids are sleeping and it is a wonderful moment in time to sit here and write about the experience. We stood along the fishing boats, with an old dock restaurant behind us, around 6:21 am, wondering when it would go off. All of a sudden the northern horizon was lit up nearly as bright as the sun. A streak of fire began heading up into the sky and to the right, and were simply awed by the comet climbing into the morning.

A couple neat observations: the speed of sound is slower than the speed of light. We figured that at least 30 seconds elapsed after seeing the first light before the sound waves rattled our ears and the windows along the dock. The second was the realization that the exhaust cloud was visible longer than the launch itself -- nearly 20 minutes after the launch, it was still visible and being transformed into a mix of colors by the rising sun. As we looked up to see it on the way back to the hotel, I thought I would test Drew's cloud identifying skills by asking him what kind it was (he was incessant about this during 2009), hoping to trick him... He looked at it, in his foggy near sleep state of mind, and hesitated and announced: an exhaust cloud. I was very impressed.

MK's question about three minutes post-launch as the dot was racing to the horizon: "Daddy is something wrong? It's headed for the sea." I love how her mind works because that's exactly what it was doing, but rising along the earth while running further out of sight. Our perspective caused us all to see it that way, and she was so insightful to put those words to that view.

We head out for NC in a couple hours and hope you have a nice morning.

D300 300mm f/9 1/50 ISO 200