Liftoff!

I could have downloaded a much better photo with no problem, but I took this one with my own little Blackberry. That's the space shuttle Endeavour a second or so after liftoff. I took it very early this morning while standing on the banks of the inter coastal waterway in Titusville, Florida, maybe five miles across the water from Cape Canaveral.

We'd driven down there Sunday night and slept in the car for a couple of hours waiting for the scheduled 4:39 a.m. launch, which was called off at the last minute. There were thousands of disappointed kids whose parents had brought them out, it being a weekend.

So we hit the road again about 2:00 this morning and got there in plenty of time to find a prime spot -- it now being a school night. However there were still thousands of people lining the Titusville waterfront waiting to see the last scheduled shuttle night launch. There are only five more shuttle flights left before NASA discontinues the program.

Someone near us had a radio so we could follow the pre-launch news. Everything went off as planned on a crisp, mostly clear night. There was a quarter-crescent moon low in the southern sky. We were close enough to see the floodlit launch gantry across the water, which is where we focused our attention.

At 4:14 the eastern horizon lit up like the sun. I could have read a book by the light where I stood. Slowly the machine lifted from its scaffolding and the light and smoke expanded. It was both awesome and just a little disappointing, because the only sound came from the exclamations and applause of the people around us. In the time it took to realize and process that thought, a tsunami of sound and vibration rolled over us from the launch site. It started low and quickly built to a roar. I could feel the vibrations in my sternum, my sinuses, my malleus, incus, and staples.

As the intensity and volume built quickly over a few seconds I began to think that soon the intensity would build to a point it would take me to my knees; but just as I thought it, the sound began its retreat, and we were soon again on the banks of a peaceful, glassy body of water on a beautiful night.

As the shuttle made its trademark slow roll towards the heavens, and the external tanks burned, it was hard not to think of the horror spectators must have experienced when Challenger exploded. But this day all systems worked and the crew is safely on their way to the international space station carrying a "cupola" -- essentially the first window the station has had.

And then it was over. Within a couple of minutes Endeavour was like a bright star in the eastern sky, and we all shuffled back to our cars and home to bed.