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Launch Is A Tailgate Party Like No Other

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 31, 2007

Updated: 10/29/2007 10:24 pm

Everybody, I suspect, has this list - even if it's just in your head. Doable things that you would really, really like to do some day.

Somewhere on my list - along with taking a hot-air balloon ride, check; attending a game at Yankee Stadium, check; visiting the Catacombs, check; bussing the Blarney Stone, check; and meeting Timothy Leary, indeed, check - was seeing a space launch.

Until Tuesday it had been too long deferred and unchecked.

As a journalist, I was never on the NASA beat. Science-oriented reporters have that detail. As a citizen, I kept finding it logistically inconvenient. A launch was more likely to be scrubbed than to occur. As a Floridian, I took it for granted.

But Tuesday made up for it.

The scene: the otherwise nondescript banks of the Banana River, near Port Canaveral, about 10 miles south of Kennedy Space Center launch pads. Perhaps 1,000 people, mainly couples and families, had parked two- and three-deep along State Road 528.

The hub was a recreation vehicle with an American flag and an antenna, representing the Launch Information Service and Amateur TV Systems, which retransmits NASA audio and video signals for launches and landings. Its speakers were chronicling countdown information.

It was also there just in case. Just in case something went wrong with the space shuttle Discovery, which sits atop a half-million gallons of rocket fuel and belches 7 million pounds of thrust. The service, known as LISATS, helped defray expenses by selling Space Shuttle Discovery launch witness certificates with names computer-printed. I got one, of course.

Ninety minutes before scheduled launch, the atmosphere, although rife with anticipation, was casual and friendly. The air was occasionally punctuated with heavily accented German, French and Spanish. Some of the English-speakers were British, Australian and Welsh. Out-of-town license plates - from Oklahoma and Texas to Massachusetts and Pennsylvania - were almost as numerous as those from Florida. For some reason, 'First in Flight' North Carolina plates seemed plentiful.

Folding chairs, blankets, binoculars and video and still cameras were much in evidence. People sat on roofs and hoods. But no music, no grills, no adult beverages and no boorish behavior. Tailgating, NASA-style. Folks ready to revel with a cause.

That's what makes it special. This is Team America accomplishing something important by flawlessly sending up the shuttle to the International Space Station. It's a respite, however brief, from everything else. From Iraq and the partisanship and pandering that is our political system. From the world of natural disasters and celebrity meltdowns.

It's seeing 'Mission Accomplished' without the cynical spin.

Say what you want about domestic priorities and the merits of travel beyond Earth's orbit, the moment you see that orange sphere separate itself from the ground is an uplifting, patriotic rush. At that second, man realizing his potential to transcend his own limits is no mere abstraction. No more than earthly applications of space-travel technology and weightless experimentation.

We overuse and insult the meaning of 'hero.' But these Discovery astronauts - six Americans and the Italian representing the European Space Agency - redefine it. Memories of Challenger and Columbia are ever-present and unspoken as eyes squint to follow the diminishing, boosterless dot and breaths are collectively held as the contrails slowly diffuse.

Godspeed, Discovery.

NASA Outtakes

A shuttle launch is best seen as a culminating activity. It's worth a pregame, if you will, visit to the Kennedy Space Center. Especially worthwhile:

• The Shuttle Launch Experience. Sights, sounds, gut-feelings of a vertical launch. But more interesting than exciting. Don't think Disney or Busch Gardens. But do think frame of reference that's available nowhere else.

• Apollo/Saturn V Center. Plenty of photo opportunities, including a 363-foot moon rocket. The Firing Room Theater re-creates an Apollo launch, and the Lunar Theater depicts the first moon landing. The video is moving.

It includes footage of President Kennedy delivering a space-program stump speech at Rice University in 1962. Kennedy was on his game as he addressed the skeptics who had questioned the value of a space program. He made the case for man's eternal quest to forge new frontiers. He spoke of 'why' we climb the highest mountains; 'why' someone would fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean; and 'why Rice plays Texas every year.'

• Bonus: The Kennedy Space Center is in the 140,000-acre Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. We're talking bald eagles (in the winter), manatees, alligators and some 340 species of birds.

• Bonus: Pet kennels are available free of charge. They're clean and functional. The attendants are conscience-easing friendly.

Joe O'Neill is a South Tampa writer who can be contacted at www.OpinionsToGoOnLine.com.

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