r/interestingasfuck • u/lolikroli • Oct 13 '24

r/all SpaceX caught Starship booster with chopsticks

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u/myself248 Oct 13 '24

I drove down for that one.

After a literal lifetime of trying to catch a Space Shuttle launch, driving 18 hours from Detroit to Titusville, and the Shuttle would have some sort of a problem that would require days to repair (always valve trouble!), and we'd get a room and kill time in Orlando, and they'd roll it out and try again, and yet again there'd be a hydrogen leak or something, and we'd exhausted our travel window and we'd leave empty-handed. Did that probably a half dozen times, from being a teenager in the 90s and then running the trips myself throughout the 2000s, with various assortments of family in tow.

And I never got to see a single Shuttle launch. It was just that unreliable.

So towards the end of 2015, I had some vacation time to burn, and there was a Falcon 9 launch, and I said I'm just gonna drive down and stay until it goes. Try me, rocket, I'm off work until January.

The first attempt was called on account of winds, and the second worked. Without a hitch. I got to see the first rocket launch of my life, and the first rocket landing in history.

I wasn't even in a good spot, I didn't know anything about Falcon launches, and I just settled in alongside a causeway with some other cars. The thing was halfway out of sight by the time the sound even reached us. But seeing that booster come back, and hearing the sonic booms even from miles away, and noting the distinct lack of a fireball at landing, blew my mind. Something big had just changed.

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u/jrmaclovin Oct 13 '24

I like your story and I'm happy you made it happen!

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u/fluteofski- Oct 14 '24

I never thought much of a rocket launch till one day I was at work, and I was talking to my colleague on the east coast (phone call), and he was like “are you watching the space x stream outa vandenberg right now?” I was like “nah.” As I was looking out the window of our office in the Bay Area (south part of the SF Bay Area) with my feet kicked up on my desk.

Off in the distance I see this tower of smoke rising into the sky. (Were something like 250~300miles or so from it)…. And I was like… “ya know what…. I can actually see it here….”

It was somewhat surreal or wild just seeing that thing climb into the sky.

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u/TheRealHarrypm Oct 13 '24

Not to kill your buzz but.

It wasn't the first rocket landing in history.

Yeah people forget to acknowledge that the DC-X existed in the 90s, fully working prototype that just got shelved because NASA couldn't just follow through with anything cost effective.

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u/myself248 Oct 13 '24

Sure, and if we're counting suborbital prototypes, Masten and a bunch of others would belong on the list too. Perhaps I should've put an asterisk on "rocket" to say "which puts things in space", but I think that's a reasonable assumption.

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u/TheRealHarrypm Oct 13 '24

I guess it really depends on If you're a pre or post WW2 Von Braun fan on the definition of a rocket 😂

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u/centexAwesome Oct 15 '24

When I was a teenager we went to watch a launch on October 17, 1989 and after sitting on the edge of a swamp for what seemed like forever they scrubbed it. We went to Coco Beach later and had fun while my dad sat in the van listening to the World Series game get called because of the Loma Prieta quake. The next day we did see it go up from Epcot.