What a Great Day

Today I had one of those days that only seem to happen when it is unplanned.

A great home cooked breakfast, then out to take a walk in the Helen and Allan Cruickshank Bird Sanctuary to visit with some Scrub Jays. These friendly little guys (and dolls) have taken "eating out of your hand" to a new level. When was the last time you saw a bird perched on a Frog?

Bill and Mary Ellen found this sanctuary that allows interaction with the birds

From there we went to Cape Canaveral where my hosts got us on the base for an unguided tour (BYOTG - bring your own tour guide). The first stop was along the Titan Causeway, the closest observation point to the launch pads for members of the press. It was from here that Bill's team watched a launch of a Delta 4Heavy just yesterday morning.

My camera doesn't do it justice but this is yesterday's launch site some 1.8 miles away

Bill had his camera set up here for yesterday's launch

The Delta 4 launch pad 37 from only 1400 feet away

This picture was taken from the launch pad area 34 where the ill-fated Apollo 1 Astronauts sat helplessly as their capsule was consumed by fire.

How close were we? Look at this picture of the cooling ring that surrounded the rocket engines during lift-off. I did not realize that all of the "smoke" you see rising during blast-off is actually steam. The rockets create so much heat that it would cause the cement launch pad to explode. So during ignition and lift-off they dump millions of gallons of water through the cooling ring to convert the heat to steam, thus "cooling" the concrete to an acceptable temperature.

Now that is "up close"!

From there we went to Complex 26, which served as the control room for the launch of the Explorer 1, America's first satellite. We tagged along with a bus tour that had just arrived at what is now a museum. Our dossen, Walt, has worked at the Cape since 1956 and was involved in various capacities with many of the launches he now tells about as a volunteer tour guide. Take a look at this picture

The communications and control panels utilized state-of-the-art magnetic tapes and vacuum tubes (those round tubes toward the top of the center cabinet). The control of the mission was still done by hand however. These machines only monitored the mission. All flight calculations and programming was done on a 5kbyte calculator!

After the tour we ended up outside where Walt pointed out a yard full of missles and rockets that are awaiting restoration. Everything from a Minuteman to a Delta 4 engine (there were three of the 16' diameter behemoths strapped to yesterday's launch).

At the end of the display yard sat a replica of the Mercury Redstone 3 rocket that lifted Alan Shephard in the Freedom 7 capsule into outer space, sitting on the exact launch pad from which history was made on May 5, 1961. Space royalty!

We then went to a remote spot, just a mile from the ocean where a lighthouse built in 1859 and erected just after the civil war became unknowingly a location that would eventually see a man walk on the moon.

When Wernher Von Braun tested one of his early rockets from White Sands, N.M. it went out of control and landed in a cemetery in Juarez, Mexico. They realized they needed more space and began to look for a better site. The U.S. Coast Guard had already taken over operation of the historic lighthouse on the Cape and 500 acres surrounding it. With the entire Atlantic Ocean adjacent to and down range from the site it was decided that, with the purchase of more of the land surrounding the area, they had found the ideal location. When President Kennedy announced the goal of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth before the end of the (1960s) decade, construction went into high gear with launch pads, control buildings, assembly buildings and so forth. The rest became the race to the moon where Neil Armstrong made the first human footprint on July 20, 1969.

I grew up with the Space Race. I may have mentioned before that I remember camping out in our neighbor's yard, setting an alarm to wake up and watch a flashing light named Telstar cross the heavens, then back to sleep until the next orbit. It accelerated as NASA was formed and hit a feverish pitch as the missions increased in complexity. It was an amazing time.

Many people think the space program died when the space shuttle fleet was retired. Not so, in fact NASA has welcomed private industry into space research and there are launches from three different groups occurring at the Cape on a regular basis. I was lucky enough to have Colls connect me with her sister and brother in law who graciously took me in and gave me a glimpse of their passion for rockets and the final frontier. Thank you, one and all, for a great day.

Where did I put that selfie stick?

... which didn't end there.

We stopped to pick up Bob, Bill's father, and went to a nice restaurant named Fishlips on the pier in Port Canaveral. While we sat and enjoyed our meal not one, but two, huge Carnival Cruise Liners sailed out of Port for parts unknown (unknown to us, I'm sure the crew and at least some of the 6,000 passengers had a pretty good idea where they were headed).

The Carnival Valor

This evening we went to a couple of access points to the ocean to see if we could find any migrating Sea Turtles that, this time of year, come up onto the beach to lay their eggs at night. We found several nest sites but did not see the big Loggerheads. I found the beach much more to my liking with moderating temperatures, a cool breeze, low light conditions and a couple hundred fewer people.

So there you have it, a long, tiring, hot, muggy day full of fun and good people.

By the way, I have had a couple people inquire as to the title and source of Bill's photography book of Cape Launches. I will put it into a separate post to follow so no one will miss it