Blast Off !

Scottsmoor, Florida
April 5, 2010

One of my most vivid memories is watching the launch of the Skylab 3 manned mission on July 28, 1973 at 7:11 a.m. I can still see the Saturn rocket scream through the southeast skies with a rumble and smoke following its trail. It was a sight that this young boy had not even come close to seeing in his 12 years. How was I to know I would see many, many more launches of spacecraft in my subsequent eight years at Vandenberg Air Force Base.

The space shuttle program is coming to a close by the end of the year, and there will only be four more launches. Opportunity presented itself, and I continued eastwards to the Space Coast of Florida to see the second-to-last launch of the shuttle Discovery. I also continued eastwards to relive a memory.

The launch of the Discovery was scheduled for 6:21 a.m. the next morning, around a half hour before sunrise. I wanted to get a closer look at the launch and was planning to see it from the waterfront of Titusville. After a short night of sleep in Daytona Beach, I headed south down the coast to Titusville. However, as I approached Titusville, I noticed that a lot of people had the same idea, especially those coming from Orlando. Gridlock on the roads was already in place, and I turned my truck around and drove north for Plan B.

I decided to watch the launch from Scottsmoor, and I stopped my truck in the parking lot of a bank. As I waited for the quiet morning to be interrupted by the launch, I reflected on my first visit to Scottsmoor in July 1973. My family vacationed in Scottsmoor for a couple of weeks after we arrived from England, and Scottsmoor would be the start of our cross-country adventure to Lompoc and our new assignment at Vandenberg AFB. Although I could not find the exact place where I stood and watched the launch of Skylab 3, I did find the nearby grocery store where I bought a Chick-O-Stick candy bar for 5 cents. Another one of those memories that I will not forget ... my first Chick-O-Stick and that taste of peanut butter and toasted coconut ... mmmm mmmm good.

The Cape Canaveral launch site was around 10 miles to the southeast of where I now was. Because I could not see the launch pad, I first saw a bright orange ball breaking away from the dark horizon. Soon the Discovery, or at least the bright flames of its rocket, rose from the orange ball. In only a few minutes, the flames of the Discovery gradually became smaller and smaller and then disappeared as the shuttle flew higher and higher into the eastern skies.

I drove northwards to return to Daytona Beach, and I could see to my right the smoke trails of the first and second stages of the rockets as they lingered in the air. Sunrise was nearing, and I wanted to see another spectacular sunrise on my trip. I turned into the Seminole Rest Pre-Historical and Historical Interpretive Park in Oak Hill, part of the Canaveral National Seashore. Here I saw the rising of the sun next to the Indian River and the crumbling last remnants of the launch of the Discovery.

The remnants of the launch of the Discovery as viewed from Seminole Rest