'Where-To' Guide for Shuttle Launch?

jacobcaz asks: "Hello! I will be heading to Florida this week and I'm hoping to get a chance to see the shuttle launch. I'm curious what tips you all might have for out-of-towners to get a chance to see the launch? How close to try to get, places to go where we won't be stuck in traffic for 24 hours, how early to leave, and so forth. Thanks!"

Comments

one little bit of advice

[AtariAmarok]

Bring a portable pocket TV and hope it is being aired on some station. Last time I heard, security and other requirements keep spectators back far from the launch site. Even if you do get something arranged where you are going to get real close, if it turns out that things fall apart or you were given bad information, you can at least look at that little TV when you are stuck in the middle of nowhere or stuck in traffic or lost.

Re:one little bit of advice

[vasqzr]

You can't get very close. We went there over 10 years ago, I think they said something like 2 miles was as close as you could get. I'm sure it's pretty loud.

Re:one little bit of advice

[Mattcelt]

I saw a launch it was with my family years ago. We parked in a parking lot in Titusville, FL and had a pretty good view from T+7 seconds or so as it ascended.

One piece of advice though - watch out for fire ants!! We ended up unwittingly parking on a fire ant mound when we got out to watch. Not fun.

Re:one little bit of advice

[menscher]

I think they said something like 2 miles was as close as you could get.

My dad used to get press credentials to it. The nearest press site is 3 miles away. You need special credentials, and they prefer you to not have a family. (If the shuttle blows up on the ground, you're dead.)

There's another press site 10-12 miles away. That one's a bit easier to get into. If it blows up on the ground, you have time to dive for cover before the blast reaches you. Even there, it's quite loud.

Re:one little bit of advice

[Anonymous Coward]

"If it blows up on the ground, you have time to dive for cover before the blast reaches you. Even there, it's quite loud."

Interesting... reminds me of an excerpt from Feynman's memoirs:

I flew back, and I just arrived when the buses were leaving, so I went straight out to the site and we waited out there, 20 miles away. We had a radio, and they were supposed to tell us when the thing was going to go off and so forth, but the radio wouldn't work, so we never knew what was happening. But just a few minutes before it was supposed to go off the radio started to work, and they told us there was 20 seconds or something to go, for people who were far away like we were. Others were closer, 6 miles away.

They gave out dark glasses that you could watch it with. Dark glasses! Twenty miles away, you couldn't see a damn thing through dark glasses. So I figured the only thing that could really hurt your eyes - bright light can never hurt your eyes - is ultraviolet light. I got behind a truck windshield, because the ultraviolet can't go through glass, so that would be safe, and so I could see the damn thing. OK.

Time comes, and this tremendous flash out there is so bright that I duck, and I see this purple splotch on the floor of the truck. I said, "That ain't it. That's an after-image." So I look back up, and I see this white light changing into yellow and then into orange. The clouds form and then they disappear again; the compression and the expansion forms and makes clouds disappear. Then finally a big ball of orange, the center that was so bright, becomes a ball of orange that starts to rise and billow a little bit and get a little black around the edges, and then you see it's a big ball of smoke with flashes on the inside of the fire going out, the heat.

All this took about one minute. It was a series from bright to dark, and I had seen it. I am about the only guy who actually looked at the damn thing the first Trinity test. Everybody else had dark glasses, and the people at six miles couldn't see it because they were all told to lie on the floor. I'm probably the only guy who saw it with the human eye.

Finally, after about a minute and a half, there's suddenly a tremendous noise - BANG, and then a rumble, like thunder -- and that's what convinced me. Nobody had said a word during this whole thing. We were all just watching quietly. But this sound released everybody- - released me particularly because the solidity of the sound at that distance meant that it had really worked.

The man standing next to me said, "What's that?"

I said, "That was the bomb."

Just about anywhere..

[T-Bear]

I used to live down there and could see it out of my backyard in Oldsmar (west of Tampa) so you can see it from just about anywhere.

It really depends on what kind of view you want. There's a long road that drives by the launch platform on the way to NASA that people typically just pull off to the side and park there.

If you show up an hour ahead of launch you can probably get a pretty good spot.

South Of Cocoa Should be good

[davcorp]

Anywhere south of Canaveral Should be good.. I live in Melbourne (south about 30 mins) and it looks great anywhere on the beach. In reality, you pretty much have an unobstructive view anywhere east of the barrier islands. Closer to the cape you will have nightmare traffice but its not all that bad. We still don't have many hotels that are open south of Cocoa (Indian Harbor, Melbourne, Indialantic, etc..) as far as I know, the Hilton, Holiday Inn, and Quality Suites are still closed because of last years hurricanes..

Re:South Of Cocoa Should be good

[cyber0ne]

Agreed. I saw a launch from Indialantic some years back and it looked fine. Granted, I'm not a NASA enthusiast and just felt like sitting on a beach and seeing a rocket go up in the distance, but it really looked fine.

It mostly depends on what is bringing you to Florida. If you're going for the launch then I'm sure you'll want to get closer, in which case there's lots of open road heading into Canaveral, so just get there early and bring food and entertainment for the day and just park off to the side.

If you're going to Florida for something else and just want to catch the launch (which your post seems to imply) then you don't have to get too close to witness it. It depends on where you're going to be in Florida in relation to the launch site. If you're going to be south of it along the eastern coast, just drive up 95 or 1 or A1A and find a spot to your liking. As long as the view of the northern sky is unobstructed, you won't miss it.

Sand Point Park

[Rob Parkhill]

When we went several years back, we ended up watching from a state park about 5 miles NW from the lauch pad. You could see both launch pads from where we were, and had a great view of the entire launch. We got there about 6 hours before the afternoon launch, and got great spots right on the waters edge. (It's actually in Titusville, just past Sand Point Park, if I recall correctly.)

Parking is available too if you get there early enough.

Of course, all of this could have changed since the last time I was down there about 4 years ago!

Honetly.

[LWATCDR]

The Merit island cause way is not bad.
Any beach in the county will give you a pretty good view. I am over 100 miles to the south and will walk out of my office and see it. Shuttle launches are not localized events.

I've seen it twice....

[dschuetz]

I've been lucky enough to see two shuttle launches. The first was from the NASA Causeway (one of the northern entrance roads crossing the, er, sound or whatever the body of water is). Unfortunately, they don't open that to the public any longer. However, if you have any contacts on the cape I'd check with them -- it might be open for employees and guests... (dunno).

The second time was a night launch. We'd gotten a nice waterfront table at a fantastic place in Port Canaveral, but I've no idea what it was called. [wait...google maps...tada! Grills Seafood Deck & Tiki Bar - www.visitgrills.com] We got a nice table on the deck near the water, watched the boats come and go (we were in town for a friend's wedding and watched them head out on their honeymoon cruise). Somehow, the four of us managed to hang onto the table for hours (having endless amounts of crabs, shrimp, and assorted drinks). Not long after it got dark, the band played the Star Spangled Banner, and about a minute after that, the shuttle launched.

-sniff- it still brings tears to my eyes.

Anyway, it wasn't nearly as cool as when we were on the causeway (you're actually several miles away, if I recall correctly). But, well....crabs, shrimp, and beer!

Re:Find a high spot, bring a telescope.

[sakusha]

A high spot?!? You DO realize that most of Florida is barely above sea level? The highest point in Florida is only 345 feet above sea level, the lowest high point of any state in the US.

Late post, but....

[phillymjs]

Let me share my experience. I had a ticket to watch the launch yesterday from inside the KSC Visitor Complex, which cost me about $50 and had to be quickly purchased a few months ago when the original May launch date was announced.

I flew to Orlando from Philadelphia in the morning and picked up a rental car. I got on the road at about 11:30am, about 4.5 hours before launch. They stagger guest arrival times to prevent total gridlock in the area, and my ticket said to show up no earlier than 1pm.

There was a LOT of traffic getting on Route 528, one of the main east-west routes in central FL. So much that they were just waving traffic through one of the toll plazas instead of collecting money. After that, it was just fine until about 8 miles from the Visitor Complex. I sat in traffic for about 45 minutes or so on Route 50, from a little ways east of Route 1 up to the 'official business check-in' building, where there was a security checkpoint in the road. Ticketed visitors like me with dashboard placards were waved through to proceed to the Visitor Complex. The other cars were turned away.

Once I got into the parking lot at about 1:10pm, they directed me to a spot. I was VERY far from the entrance because I arrived so late. I looked at the placards in other cars right by the entrance, and they had different times on them-- the earliest I saw said 9:30am.

Now, through security. I had a collapsible chair with me, binoculars, my camera and an external battery pack for it, two cellphones (work and personal), wallet and car keys. Carrying all this stuff was awkward because on launch days backpacks are absolutely verboten for security reasons. I had just been to KSC in May, and backpacks were fine then-- the security people check everything you have in them anyway.( If I go to KSC for a launch again, I'm going to be carrying my stuff in one of these-- they can't possibly object to that, can they?)

First it was through the metal detector with my pockets emptied, and then over to a table where another guy checked all my stuff. I had to turn on my camera and phones to show him they were functional, explain my camera's battery pack, and hold up my binocs so he could see through them. Satisfied, he let me pass. Oddly, he didn't even glance at the collapsible chair in the sleeve slung over my shoulder, where I could have been smuggling damned near anything 3' long and cylindrical.

Finally, I get out into the complex proper, and head over to the northeast corner of the complex. I chose a nice spot in the shade provided by the left SRB of the external tank and booster exhibit, and settled in to wait. You can't see the launch pad from the complex, due to a line of trees on the other side of the road, but the shuttle is only airborne for a few seconds before it clears them. Not ten minutes later, the launch was scrubbed. D'oh!

I hung out for a while and waited for everyone else to clear out before heading back to Orlando to catch my 8:30 flight home. Between the ticket, airfare and rental car, it was about a $400 day. I was disappointed, but I knew my chances when I decided to make the trip.

If they get it up before the end of July, I won't be there to see it. I'm rooting for this fuel sensor problem to be a real ballbuster so the launch is pushed back to September, and then maybe I'll take another crack at witnessing it. I don't know if I'm going to do it from KSC, though. It was a LOT of hassle with all the friggin' security. Also, the single-day round trip was a little rough. I had work on Thursday, and I had been very nervous about missing my flight home (th