Rain and Lightning

A hot Tuesday afternoon will soon give way to rain and electrical storms. The doors of the Vehicle Assembly Building are open in anticipation that Atlantis will be rolled out to the pad tomorrow morning.

On Wednesday morning, April 21, I was supposed to be up at 5 am for a live cross to "The Space Show" at Southern FM. But I had to reneg on that agreement, because of the delay in the rollout to the pad of STS 132.

Instead I was up at 3 am to get to the Kennedy Space Center by 4 am. As I left the motel it was raining, but I was hopeful that it would clear. They say in Melbourne, Australia, that you can get all four seasons in one day. I think that our Floridian namesake city could compress that claim to one hour.

However, as I drove out of Titusville and across the Indian River causeway there were distant flashes of lightning. Logic said I should turn back, but I figured since I was already driving I might as well continue. After all, I might get to see lightning strike on the VAB or the lightning towers surrounding the new Aries launch pad, Pad 39B. You see, the terrain is so flat that the pad structures and buildings are the highest structures for tens of kilometres around.

When I got to the News Center car park at 4:30 am the area was deserted. I parked the car so I could look out at the VAB, and settled back to enjoy the ambience through the rain soaked windscreen. Wow! I was at KSC - the home of Apollo and Shuttle!! And there was the Vehicle Assembly Building just across the road. Where the 111 metre tall Saturn 5 moon rockets had been assembled. Where even now stood the Space Shuttle Atlantis, albeit hidden from my view.

At about 4:45 am two other cars arrived and, like me, their owners parked and sat in their vehicles, unwilling to get out into the rain. A quarter of an hour later a vehicle drove up to the News Center, and the lights went on inside the building. A few more cars arrived, KSC security drove by and checked us out, and then a Public Affairs Officer rocked up in a NASA van.

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