December 21, 2015
Monday
Miles Traveled 0
Total Miles Traveled 1742
Day 103
No, that’s not a sunset; we are staying at Moni’s parents
at Port St. John, Fl for the holidays. Port
St. John is located about 10 miles west of Cape Canaveral and we were able to
watch the SpaceX 9 rocket launch from the space center, standing in their
backyard last night.
SpaceX successfully launched their Falcon 9 rocket
carrying 11 satellites to low-Earth orbit. This mission also marked SpaceX's
first successful landing of the first stage booster. This was the first time a large rocket has
delivered spacecraft to orbit and returned to Earth intact, so that it could
potentially fly again. The 15 story
booster landed upright about 6 miles from the launch site, right on
target.
At lift off, the eastern sky looked as if it were late
evening at sunset, then we could see the flame and hear the rumble from the rockets nine engines. When the first stage separated,
the flame changed from yellow to blue, and a few minutes later we could see the
booster returning to earth. Not long after
it descended below the tree line, we heard a loud boom and thought the worst,
but learned the mission was a historical success.
My only regret of the evening is that I tried to use my
cell phone camera and could not capture the quality of our view.
3 comments:
Finally caught up with your adventure! Fantastic read. Enjoyed the sentence about reminding yourself of the "no hurry". Miss you guys.
We have a turtle at the upper helm holding a sign that says "take it slow" to remind us it's not about the destination but the journey. Our good friends Bob and Deb bought it for us at GTB.
We have a turtle at the upper helm holding a sign that says "take it slow" to remind us it's not about the destination but the journey. Our good friends Bob and Deb bought it for us at GTB.
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