Mission STP-2: My Trip to View the Third Launch of SpaceX’s
Monster Falcon Heavy Rocket
You’ll have read the press release and seen the professional photos.
Well, this is my experience of SpaceX’s STP-2 Falcon Heavy launch in late June
2019 – a personal pilgrimage for the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11.
On July 16th 1969, when I was nearly six, I
watched Apollo 11 launched from LC-39A at Cape Canaveral on a small
black-and-white TV set. Ever since, I’ve wanted to see a big rocket launch. One
of those things I kept promising myself, but never quite got around to. Annoyingly,
an old friend got to watch a Shuttle launch without even trying – he just
happened to be in Florida on a family holiday at the time. Then the Shuttle
program ended and it seemed like I’d permanently missed the boat. I would have
to make do with seeing a much smaller rocket fire-up someday, an Atlas or Delta
or Falcon 9 maybe.
Fast forward to February 2018 and suddenly it seemed like the
debut of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy (another big liquid-fuelled rocket at last) might
actually happen. A big show was promised if it did – not as much fire and
thunder as a Saturn V, but getting there with 27 Merlin engines all spewing
fire at once. As the final days counted down, I dithered, wanting to go but sure
it would be scrubbed and delayed yet again.
Scrubs are trouble for foreign tourists like me: weeks of
postponement and a wasted trip. Still, on the Sunday before launch, my bag was
packed, my ESTA done, all the bookings – trains, flights, hotels, rental car –
lined up in a stack of windows on my PC. A few clicks were literally all I
needed to do to make it happen. Still I dithered. The last possible hour to
travel passed and I heard the train leave my local station. I discovered almost
by default that I wasn’t going – maybe too afraid I’d spend big only to end up twiddling
my thumbs in a Florida motel.
Of course, inevitably, FH debuted on cue and what a triumph
it was, a big liquid fuelled rocket that channelled the Saturn V like nothing
really had for fifty years. I was furious with myself for not going; even I
didn’t really know why I’d failed to launch, unlike FH.
***
The next Falcon Heavy launch was cursed by expensive
trans-Atlantic flights, but when the 21st of June 2019 rolled
around, when Falcon Heavy looked set to fly again a few days later and there
were flights going for cheap, I booked with just 48 hours to go until launch.
Then, due to travel down to London for my flight and with an
hour to go, the dreaded word ‘cancelled’ appeared in scarlet next to my train
in the app. Panic ensued. My phone wasn’t charged and I wasn’t ready, but I
just managed to run out and down to our little rural station for the earlier
train instead.
I got to London, had a meal with my daughter and walked
across a sunlit and lovely Green Park to Victoria station for the train to
Gatwick. My trip was on, but it all seemed surreal somehow. I kept checking the
SpaceX website and Twitter feed, expecting a scrub. Tantalisingly, it still
kept showing as 23:30 on the 24th June. So
I decided to splash out on a Kennedy Space Centre viewing package – the cheaper
‘Feel the Fun’ option, because the full-fat ‘Feel the Heat’ package was long
sold-out. I somehow managed to book it on my phone from a packed departure
lounge, hoping they’d accept a digital ticket (the website doesn’t say so, but they
do).
***
Things went smoothly enough until next morning, when I woke
jetlagged and early in my motel on Orlando’s tropically leafy International
Drive. I imagined packed pre-launch roads and parking lots full and angry, so I
set off for Kennedy Space Center straightaway.
In reality, Highway 528, the toll-road to the coast, was
empty and I got across the causeway onto Merritt Island – the barrier island
which hosts the Kennedy Space Centre and a large wildlife reserve - well before
the visitor centre opened for the day. They ushered me past the usual $10
parking-fee booths – free parking for launch day! Most of the other cars
already parked displayed permits that showed they were dropping off children at
the Astronaut Training Experience, one of KSCVC’s more expensive optional
extras. I was able to park right at the front, great for access to my car
during the long, long wait ahead; not so good when it came time to leave again.
Overhead, the sky was clear and cloudless. The air was
already hot and getting hotter. I milled about, waiting for the gates to open.
Even so, a huge queue had formed at the entrance gates before I could join it.
Overhead were big blue letters that spelled ‘E X P L O R E’ and beyond were the
missiles of the rocket garden. I got to know that sign all too well over the
next 21 hours.
I spent the day at the Kennedy Space Centre. I was afraid
there wouldn’t be enough to fill the time, but the day flew past. I did indeed
explore: The Rocket Garden with its Atlas and Redstone and Saturn 1 and giant
F-1 engine; the Hall of Fame and its original Gemini and Mercury capsules; Atlantis,
displayed in its own building as if in flight with cargo bay open and arm
deployed. I spent a lot of time in ‘the World’s largest’ space-themed gift
shop, for it had the strongest aircon’ on site. Even so, most of what’s on
offer at Kennedy isn’t at the visitor center at all:
to see it, you need a bus tour because the launch complexes, the Vertical
Assembly Building and even the Apollo displays are all off-limits to private
cars.
The basic free bus tour is a quick 45-minute whip-around with
no stops and there’s often a long hot wait. But I managed to book onto the
extended ‘Explore’ tour instead. It was my best decision of Launch Day and not
just because I avoided the sweltering queue. The reason? The ‘Explore’ tour
gave me an unexpected and close-up view of Falcon Heavy, already out at launch
complex 39A, that the ordinary tour missed out.
The usual road that leads right past LC-39A, the old Apollo
launch complex now used by SpaceX, was disappointingly closed off by a Police
SUV with lights flashing. But the Explore tour stops off at a location the
basic tours miss out – a tracking camera station set high above the beach and
smack between Launch Complexes 38 and 39A. Up the steps to the camera platform
brought incredible views of Falcon Heavy, already erected on the pad at LC-39A and
waiting by SpaceX’s newly-renovated black service tower with its new
2001-inspired astronaut gantry.
Through my trusty 10x42 Nikon SE binos,
I was able to get a startlingly close-up view of the still-sooty side boosters,
the mission logos, the hold-down clamps and the strongback. Falcon Heavy looked
ready to go. A guy on the tour borrowed my binos and
showed me a selfie taken by a friend of his, right next to the rocket! The
lucky friend, he explained, having helped engineer one of the STP-2 satellites
had been given special access.
Getting back in the bus, I realised they weren’t counting us
back in as they were supposed to. I was overcome with the temptation to hide
out right there at the tracking camera to wait and view the launch from close
by. The actual launch, seen from eight times as far away, would bring home a
chastening reality – never mind having to survive outside for fifteen hours in
hundred-degree temperatures, I would have been injured or worse by the heat and/or
shock waves from those 27 Merlin engines developing five million pounds of
thrust (65% of a Saturn V). All those dramatic press photos are captured by
remote cameras for a reason. At just less than 1.5 Km from the tracking camera
platform, FH looked a safe distance away; but that’s an illusion.
My tour ended at the Apollo building, where they have a
complete Saturn V among other fascinating displays. On the lawn in front,
overlooking Banana Creek, were bleachers set up to give by far the best and
closest views of the launch that night. Sadly, all those expensive seats had
sold out for me, so I stood by them and looked longingly out at Falcon Heavy
and tried to imagine what the launch might be like from here just six miles
from ground zero at LC-39A (in fact, the theoretical closest you can get is
only three miles – a figure derived from the Saturn V days when someone
calculated that was the minimum if the rocket exploded).
Kennedy Space Centre early on launch day before the crowds
Atlas-Mercury and the Moon from KSVC on STP-2 launch day
Falcon Heavy from the tracking camera platform, a few hours
before launch
Tracking camera, setup and ready for the launch, between
LC-38 and LC-39A
Road to LC-39A – closed for launch!
My own launch package was for viewing from a set of permanent
bleachers set up on the lawn behind the new Atlantis building, in an area
closed from general access: no nearer than the free (with an entrance ticket
for the visitor center) viewing from the Rocket
Garden lawn, but with a better low-down view and with food and activities
included.
My ticket said 19:30, so after an hour of phone-charging at
my car, I headed back in and queued by entrance to the ‘Feel the Fun’ area. The
queue turned out to be a long one. Sitting on concrete in line, listening to
the loop of triumphant music from the Atlantis building got old fast. The
trouble was a crash out on the causeway that delayed the caterers.
The wait was finally over and we filed in, each given a wrist
band for re-entry (no pun intended) and another for the free photo and food,
along with the promised gift – a NASA alloy water bottle.
The catering and organisation were frankly better than I
expected. Soft drinks were free all night and the food – beef or veggie chilli
with all the trappings – was really excellent. The food was served in a
permanent marquee and tables were provided for eating, lit with balloon
lanterns.
Afterwards, everyone began to fill the bleachers and the astro-turf lawn between; many had brought their own
picnics, seats and mats; I felt a bit low-rent with just my camera. Strangely,
though, few had thought to bring binoculars.
As darkness fell, the mosquitos started their free meal and I
wished I’d bought repellent. We waited and a DJ started playing all the obvious
hits – Rocket Man, Life on Mars etc – followed by some very incongruous line
dancing. Next to the food marquee meanwhile, they’d laid on some games for the
kids.
We’d need the entertainment, because at nine, with just an
easy-seeming two hours to go, the DJ announced a delay until at least two
thirty am. Ouch! I fully expected the delay to turn into a scrub, so I went to
hang listlessly out in the cool of the gift shop and then went back for a sleep
in my car. I reckoned the disappointed crowds leaving would wake me if they
called the launch off meanwhile.
***
When my alarm woke me again at one twenty, the KSCVC was
transformed. Crowds were milling around excitedly outside the entrance. The
previously-dark giant countdown clock was now announcing one hour and nine
minutes to go in blazing two-metre numerals. Inside, the crowds at the rocket
garden and the launch-package bleachers were heaving and expectant.
Miraculously, they hadn’t scrubbed after all, even if the DJ
kept warning they still might and not to blame him if they did (it
seemed he’d unfairly had lots of hassle after previous scrubs). At thirty
minutes to go they started to broadcast SpaceX live on big screens and the
excitement reached fever pitch. So many tired and excited people were wandering
about it was hard to find anywhere safe to setup my camera tripod.
The countdown continued and the DJ tried to tell us, above
the rising hubbub, where to look. He warned us that we might well be inclined
to ‘say a bad word’ when Falcon Heavy appeared over the trees, but to resist
for the sake of the children. At T-10, we all counted down together. Then there
was a moment when no one moved, no one breathed and all was dark.
Then, above the hedge, a giant ball of light flickered
soundlessly and grew until it lit up half the sky with an eerie yellow glow, how
I imagine a nuke. When Falcon Heavy finally appeared, it was just a plume of
dazzling flame in the darkness, flickering yellow down into burning blue. I
tried looking through my binos, but flinched away dazzled
– FH was still much too close, too bright and hot for that. Still it was completely
quiet, the shock waves of launch still whizzing across the miles of Merritt
Island towards us.
When the noise came, it started with a rumble as the 27
engines gradually fired up in sequence, then built as the rocket cleared the
pad and the engines built to full power. It hit as a rock-concert-loud assault,
both heard and felt. Sure enough, I said that bad word. Sorry kids.
The sound is hard to describe. I expected a simple roar like
a jet engine, but it had a tortured, distorted character, the battering sound
waves crackling with a staccato chain-saw rip. It was then that I realised just
how overwhelming it would have been from less than a mile away, out at the
tracking camera - perhaps unendurable without somewhere solid to take shelter.
As Falcon Heavy climbed, the noise hardly abated, but it
became watchable through binoculars, until the engines vanished to a single
star burning through the exhaust haze and flame. Main engine cutoff came and two new stars – the still-burning side
boosters - separated from the central one in extraordinary swirls of coloured
gas that looked just like a nebula.
Then came a strange and wonderful sight through my binos. The bright star of the centre stage engines became
the centre of a slowly expanding, perfect giant umbrella of incandescent gases,
the umbrella’s ‘ribs’ flowing away like jets in a fountain (see photo below). I
could see why this effect is frequently mistaken for a UFO. There were ‘oohs’
and ‘awes’ from all around.
I saw the brief flare of the boosters’ re-entry burn. Then it
went dark; for what seemed ages. When the landing burns of the returning side
boosters began, they lit up the sky again, on the south side above the Atlantis
building this time, disappearing behind the trees. The roar reached us just as
they landed. Everyone cheered. The yellow light flickered dramatically as the
boosters touched down unseen below our horizon. People cheered again and
clapped; then it went dark and quiet. Launch over.
That was it. Conversation resumed, some people started to
pack up, others left.
BANG-BANG!
BANG-BANG!
Four duck-and-cover-inducingly loud retorts like some monster
canon echoed through the night: the sonic booms of the returning boosters had
reached us at last. Some said it was the most dramatic moment of all, a final
act of high drama even Apollo couldn’t have staged.
Only then did I realise that it was 3 am and not only did I
have to survive a long and exhausting traffic jam to get back to my bed in
Orlando, fully 24 hours after I’d left it. Worse, my camera had malfunctioned,
my exposures much too short and the results poor. Still, I had the memories,
and what memories they are!
My meagre photos of the launch follow. Camera problems meant
my long-exposure launch shot didn’t happen.
Giant KSCVC countdown clock
Crowds gather, SpaceX livecast
starts …
STP-2 steams on the big screen
T-0: FH is below the horizon, lights up the Florida night
Launch arc
Incredible tracking camera shot – from SpaceX Twitter feed –
shows the ‘nebula’ of gases from the separating boosters, just as I saw it
through binoculars
Boostback burn beyond the pines at the KSVC
Atlantis Building
Do I have regrets? A few. I wished I’d booked earlier and got
even closer, onto the bleachers at Banana Creek from where I’d have seen the
start of the launch, which I missed below the horizon from the visitor centre;
I hope to do that sometime. I wished I hadn’t bothered with my malfunctioning
camera at all, just as the DJ had wisely advised. I wished I had positioned
myself high on one of the bleachers with a better view to the south and the
landing boosters. Overall though, it was an incredible experience, even if,
like my first eclipse two years before, it left me like a junkie wanting more …
Summary: you don’t need me to tell you that a big launch is a
true bucket list experience for any space enthusiast!