The “naked eye” view that a regular launch viewer would see from the Banana River in Cape Canaveral, about 10 miles from the launch site. This view was made standing on a pier with about 50-75 other people in attendance. While the view is not as up close as what you see on television, it is incredible to see in person — and to hear the true volume of the launches, especially the sonic booms.
Audio is a mix of Spaceflight Now and SpaceX streaming coverage and is included as it was part of the scene as many people had the coverage on their phones throughout the countdown and launch.
I’ve been rather busy of late, mostly on my professional side. Some fun projects, a hurricane, some travel and so forth…and as a result I haven’t posted much to this blog lately.
That said, I have been busy taking photographs. Here’s a gallery of the launch photos:
In its sixth mission for July and it’s thirty-third mission of the year, SpaceX launched 53 Starlink this morning from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Liftoff from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida occurred at 9:38 a.m. EDT (1338 GMT).
Fifty-three years ago today, I saw Apollo 11 as she lifted off from Cape Kennedy and on her way to the moon.
The day was typical Florida morning coastal weather: hot, humid, with a bit of a sea breeze to only slightly temper the sun that bore its way through the sky and onto sizzling skin. The crowd around me flapped whatever papers or fans they had as they waited nervously for the launch, whose time was marked by a huge clock counting backwards.
My mother and I had been at Cape Kennedy since long before dawn, and we were seated among VIPs that included the vice president, movie stars, politicians and the well-to-do that NASA thought important. I was not important, I was just a lucky kid.
SpaceX launch its 25th resupply mission to the International Space Station Thursday night from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida about a Falcon 9 booster.
While waiting out a long hold due to lazy thunderstorms that were lingering too close to SLC-41 to safely launch United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V set to carry the US Space Force’s payload designated as USSF-12, I grabbed a few interesting shots from the nearby launch pads.
Out at LC-39A, SpaceX is constructing its launch tower for future Starship missions. (click for full res version) @Charles Boyer, 2022 (CC BY 3.0 US)
Three launch pads: on the left in the background, SpaceX is raising a launch tower for Starship. Center, Artemis-1 on its launch pad. Right, in the background, is where SpaceX launches its Falcon-class rockets, including astronauts into Earth orbit.
SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 booster B1060 for a record-breaking 13th time Friday from Pad LC-39A from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12:09 p.m. EDT (1609 GMT). It placed hauling 53 more Starlink internet satellites into orbit.
Through the years, I have photographed a lot of landscape, fashion, decaying architecture and sports professionally, and have enjoyed some decent success in each realm. No, I don’t view myself as any kind of Richard Avedon or Ansel Adams, but I do think a handful of my photos could be fairly termed “good.” I’ve enjoyed that journey and the experiences that went with it, and perhaps that is the most important thing.
Rocket launch photography is a whole other animal. To make a great launch shot, you need access (the closer the better), and the ability to deal with some very mixed conditions: the fire and flame is incredibly bright while the rest of the photo is either in normal light or at night. In the early days of digital cameras the available dynamic range was lacking, and film has its own personality — chrome (slide) film has maybe a +/- 2 stop latitude, and negative film perhaps as many as +/- 5 stops. That’s helpful, but color darkroom is a bear in its own right. That said, dodging and burning in is really hard for color.
Anyway, for the Space Shuttle Endeavour’s STS-123 launch in 2008, I set up with negative film and essentially ran a whole roll of film through in the first few seconds of launch. The initial shots were kind of…okay…but the third to last one was a real keeper.
Unless you work with the launch vehicles at the Cape directly, getting up close and personal with them really doesn’t happen often. I got lucky and was given a chance (with several other people) to visit the Space Shuttle Orbiter Processing Facility while Atlantis was there, courtesy of the NASA Public Affairs Office. That was in 2012 — ten years ago — and it was one of my favorite
Atlantis is in the Kennedy Space Center’s Visitor Center, where it is a centerpiece of the many artifacts that are available for viewing. The first Orion capsule is there, as is SpaceX’s first Dragon capsule that went to the International Space Station, among many other articles.
In front of Atlantis’s landing gear, May 2012. For me, this was hallowed ground — the orbiter where it was prepared for its next mission.
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