[2022-08-27: In honor of the planned launch of the Artemis 1 (SLS/Orion) space vehicle on Monday, August 29th, I revisited my experiences from almost eight-years ago. Enjoy.]
I was there, on December 5, 2014, at the Kennedy Space Center to watch the launch of the Orion capsule for EFT1 (Exploration Flight Test 1) aboard the Delta IV Heavy. That was the first flight, unmanned, of the Orion capsule. I was part of a group of Space Enthusiasts invited to spend a couple days at KSC to speak with NASA officials, get some behind the scenes tours and watch the launch itself. It was part of a program called a NASA Social where NASA gave access to the launch to promote the Space program via this small army of enthusiasts eager to share online what we were witnessing.
After moving to Florida in 2008 I tried to attend all of the remaining Space Shuttle launches and was lucky enough to see a few launches from locations as close as the public was permitted to view NASA launches. Because getting tickets to view launches on NASA property wasn’t always easy, I eventually found a bar on the edge of the river where I could hang-out, order beers, set up my cameras and enjoy the launch.
But after hanging out with the NASA Social folks for three-days (we got a third day because the launch was scrubbed on December 4th), what I experienced with this launch was one of the most amazing launches that I was lucky enough to witness in person. It’s hard to capture the power of those rockets as the sound-wave moves across the water to you and cheers from the crowd after waiting often hours, sometimes days in less than comfortable weather (Yay Florida!). After experience this launch, I was left wondering how amazing witnessing one of the Saturn V launches must have been.
Here’s the video that I shot of the launch of EFT1 (Orion/Delta IV Heavy) on December 5, 2014, followed by images also from that launch. Enjoy.
JBB’s Media Projects (website) by Joseph Bruce Bustillos is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
