So I got home late the night before and before I went to sleep, I plugged all of my technologies in. I wanted to make sure I had full batteries for everything. I had a dream that I was late and missed the whole thing. It almost became a reality because I am an inept alarm clock setter, and I got lucky enough to be behind the only other (15 mph under the speed limit) person on the one lane part of Narcoosee Road at 4:45 in the morning.
When I pulled up, I saw a crowd had gathered around something. I walked up and there is Neil deGrasse Tyson with a laser pointer giving us a 6am astronomy lesson in the parking lot! It was fabulous! Shortly thereafter, we got on our bus and headed out to the causeway.
Once we got out there, I ended up with a group of about ten people at the far end of everyone else- but we had a full view of the rocket so we could see it clear the pad. In my opinion, that is the best part- watching it clear the pad. You can get a good view of it in the air anywhere- but seeing it clear the pad is the unique, awesome view being up close affords you. So we waited. We talked. Sang the "GO!" song up until the weather part- NO GO on weather! It was up and down- here is how it went.
GRAIL had two instantaneous launch windows. They were about an hour apart. If it wasn't ready to go at that second, it was a no go for launch because it HAD to be launched right then. See, usually launches have pretty big windows of time to fix any issues- like a person wandering into restricted areas, weather holds, etc. So they can basically reschedule the new launch time for sometime within that window. Not GRAIL- it had once chance and once chance only, twice each morning, precisely on the dot. So they scrubbed the first launch time that morning, and we waited for the second launch time. At this point, clouds started rolling in, and I predicted there was no WAY it was going to launch with clouds like that hanging out. I was right.
They scrubbed and we went back to KSC. They would try again tomorrow.
The cool thing was, we were each given a complimentary admission ticket to Kennedy Space Center, so many of us headed there after this because it was still really early.
I met up with some people and watched the "Hubble" IMAX movie in 3-D, which was SUPERB! Then I met up with some different people and went to the exhibit they had under the theater- had a lot of really cool space stuff in there, including a piece of the moon we were allowed to touch. Really neat to touch something that was once a part of the moon.
I will definitely say this, NASA goes all out when it comes to public education. They had some really neat people there, but I will get to that later, because I actually got to meet some of them at dinner the next night.
So that afternoon, Neil deGrasse Tyson was going to be speaking again at an informal q&a session. I definitely went. I got to ask him another question again, but I will be writing a separate post for that because I asked him a really neat question and got a really neat answer.
We then went and stood in line for Nichelle Nichols autograph. I was never a big Star Trek fan, I watched it when I was a kid, but never a junkie, but I have a friend who was, so I stood in line and got her to sign the back of my lanyard next to Neil deGrasse Tyson, and a GRAIL postcard for my friend.
The good thing about the launch being delayed is that it also delayed the end of the Tweetup. But sadly, about half of our people had to leave. I lucked out.
But, before some people left, it was Endless BBQ time---the LEGENDARY ENDLESS BBQ!! It really is legendary. It deserves it's own post as well. :)
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