Godspeed Discovery

She is the grande dame of the fleet.
With more missions, more mileage and more “firsts” than any other spacecraft in history, orbiter OV-103, better known to us all as Discovery, will fly her last mission today.
And I will be there to see her off.
How could I not?
As you all know, I’m nothing if not a complete and total uber-geek when it comes to space stuff.
My deepest passion has always been the Mercury-to-Apollo years, when the technology was literally being invented faster than the materials and know-how could keep up, and every flight was a billion dollar sit-on-the-edge-of-your-seat gamble. 400,000 people pulled together as one, 24/7 for the better part of a decade, to pull off what many people then (and a few idiots still today) considered impossible, putting a man on the moon. Six times.
After such an incredible feat, NASA’s next act seemed on the surface a bit ho-hum.
Looked at pragmatically, the shuttle was really nothing more than a reusable space delivery truck.
It could only go into orbit and back and thus had none of the frontier romance of heading off to the moon or other planets.
But make no mistake… the shuttles are ANYTHING but ordinary.
30 years after their first flight, they still stand as the high water mark in machine engineering.
A few sobering facts…

Max Takeoff weight: 4,500,000 lbs (2,045,000 kgs)
Total thrust: 6,200,000+ lbs (equivalent to 44,000,000 hp)
Top speed: 17,440 mph (28,067 km/h) - Mach 25
Max altitude: 400 statute miles (643 km)
Max payload to low orbit: 63,500 lbs (28,803 kgs)
Total length of electrical wiring: 370 km
Number of pneumatic and hydraulic valves: 1,060
Number of circuit breakers: 1,440
Total number of parts: 2,500,000+

What we have here is a team of machines that can each blast the equivalent of two full tractor trailer loads of stuff all the way to orbit, stay there for weeks, and if necessary bring said amount of stuff BACK, withstanding temperatures of 3,000+ degrees F on the way down.
And do it over and over and over…
They are the most complex moving objects humans have ever created.
And Discovery is the undisputed queen bee.
Her record speaks for itself:

Most space flights – 39
Most miles in space – 150,000,000+
Most days in space – 359
Performed both Return-To-Flight missions after losses of both Challenger and Columbia
First recovery for repair of an in-service satellite
Launched the Hubble Space Telescope
Performed two repair missions on Hubble
Launched Mercury legend and hero John Glenn back into space

And she has one thing in particular that is near and dear to me, I have seen her fly before.
Way back in 1989 I was fortunate enough to be down in Florida when STS-29 launched, Discovery’s 8th mission. I was in Fort Lauderdale at the time, but was more than happy to make the 3 hour schlep up the coast at 4:00 am to see the spectacle of a lifetime. I was not disappointed.
We had to sit some two extra hours before they finally declared her “go”, but man… was it worth the wait.
As the radio called T-minus 6 seconds, we could just make out the glare of the orbiter’s three main engines firing.
Then at zero, the sun rose for the second time that day.
When the SRB’s (Solid Rocket Boosters) lit, the 4.5 million pound beast hopped off the pad with a vengeance, clocking more than 100 mph as her tail cleared the launch tower (a mere 200 ft up). Two massive columns of white hot plasma scorched earthward in the best fireworks display I’ve ever seen.
Then the sound hit us.
Even from some 12 miles (19 km) away on the side of the road in Titusville, the vibration was so intense it was hard to speak. From the way they rattled, I thought the large plate glass windows in the shops across the street from us were going to blow apart.
No theatrical reproduction of what this sounds like even remotely prepares you for the real thing.
The sound is in fact so powerful that if you were to be standing within 1000 ft or less of the launch pad the sheer intensity of it would kill you.
We stared in awe as it climbed.
Then the call “go for throttle up, 104%” came. That always catches my attention.
On the one hand, I think it’s the coolest sounding command of the space age, I mean, they don’t go to 100%, they go to 104%. It’s like somebody at NASA decided that the shuttle engines could go to 11.
In reality, the reason is late in the development phase the folks at Rocketdyne were able to certify the engines at 104% of their original rated power, but since the flight planning had already been done with the original ratings, it was easier just to create a new setting of 104% (apparently they can now even be brought up to 109% in manual override, but I don’t know if that’s ever been used).
But on the other hand, that call is also more than a bit chilling.
It’s the last thing the crew onboard Challenger heard before a bad SRB gasket cooked their fuel tank and quickly thereafter vaporized most of their spacecraft.
Having occurred less than three years earlier at that time, this was no doubt the reason everyone – me included - seemed to hold their breath for just an instant.
But all was good.
A moment later, we heard “SRB separation” and the ominous white brutes were let go. We could just barely make out the contrails arcing away from the orbiter some 150,000 ft up. What a sight.
The orbiter then pretty much disappeared from view but we all stood transfixed, listening in a trance as Mission Control called out the numbers:

“3 minutes 15 seconds… Discovery now 51 nautical miles in altitude, 66 nautical miles downrange, velocity now reading 6500 feet per second.”
“5 min 15 sec, Discovery now 63 nautical miles in altitude, 202 nautical miles downrange, velocity now reading 11,000 feet per second”
“7 min 30 sec, Discovery now 67 nautical miles in altitude, 485 nautical miles downrange”
“8 min 15 sec, Discovery now 75 nautical miles in altitude, 650 nautical miles downrange, velocity 24,900 feet per second, standing by now for main engine cutoff”
“8 min 45 sec, MECO (main engine cutoff)”

That’s it, she was in space.
The crowd roared and applauded.
Although that was some 22 years ago, I can recall it like it was yesterday.
I nearly had the chance to witness something even more spectacular, a night launch, the very next year.
I was back down for spring break again in Pompano Beach with my gang, and on the very last night before our return, Atlantis was scheduled to launch a secret military payload at around midnight.
We’d figured this was obviously too good to pass up, so we decided to stop in Titusville to catch it.
But delay after delay was called, and finally around 2:00 am, with only 30 seconds left in the countdown, they scrubbed. Talk about a letdown! Especially since we now had to get back in the cars and drive back non-stop back to Montreal in order to be back at work on time. Sans sleep.
For whatever reason, I have never been able to synch up my vacation schedule to make it to another launch since. But fate has a funny way of intervening. Around five years ago, my mother decided she was going to try and spend a few months each winter down in Florida, and lo and behold, the best deal she got was at a little gated community on the beach in Cape Canaveral, some 20 minutes from the Space Center. I swear I had absolutely nothing to do with this.
But no matter when I’ve come to visit, I haven’t been able to catch a launch.
Until now.
With the shuttle program officially ending in June 2011, I realized this is pretty much it, only three chances left, and the last one in June, STS-135, is not even officially funded yet. So really it’s two.
Originally scheduled to go in November, Discovery’s last mission got pushed back when they found some cracks in the main fuel tank (that big orange thing in the middle). This is generally considered bad, what with it containing several million pounds of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.
So they began working on a fix, and the date kept getting pushed back. Finally they locked it in on Thursday, February 24th. I looked at my calendar. Hmmm. Work schedule was manageable. Mom leaves to come home that Saturday, check flights and… bingo! I managed to score West Jet $129.00 one-way special just days before the launch.
But the best was yet to come.
The original plan was to walk to the end of my mom’s beach, which puts you in Jetty Park at Port Canaveral. This is about 15 miles (25 km) from the launch pad. As you can’t really get any closer on than 11 – 12 miles anywhere else, this is pretty good. And certainly convenient.
But I really had always wanted to witness a launch right from Kennedy Space Center.
Lord knows I’ve tried.
On many occasions when a launch was announced, I’d race the KSC website to see if I could score a pass. No dice. These things get snapped up quicker than Justin Bieber tickets.
And sure enough, the minute I had booked the flight, I went straight to the KSC site.
“Sorry, and thanks for playing…”
I didn’t expect otherwise.
So yesterday I decided just the same to get some use out of my annual pass and go see what was happening at Kennedy, get some shots of Discovery on the pad, and catch some of the buzz.
And it was then I discovered that they actually still had visitor’s center passes.
(Pause, look of disbelief)
“One, please!”
I suppose good things do come to those who wait.
So I am off now to bid the lady adieu on her final mission, and to hear the mighty roar of 6 million+ pounds of thrust tear the sky apart for what is now nearly the very last time.
And I’ll be a mere 6 miles away.
Stay tuned... :)