Simon, I got to NASA after the Apollo program ended, but I witnessed the first Shuttle flight from that pad - and many more. There is nothing as spectacular as an orbital-class rocket launch. Nothing. I watched well over 100 of them from as close as most people were allowed to get - the press sites - and it didn't matter if it was a Delta, an Atlas, a Trident missile, a Titan III, or a Space Shuttle; the very ground moves, and you can feel your liver moving inside you under those intense sound waves. It is a genuine jaw-drop.
I was living in Atlanta in the summer of 1969. Drove down to Cape Canaveral with two high school buddies, my parents let us borrow the big Ford station wagon. We got there about 3 am, we were on a back road and the shoulders were packed! We went ahead and parked and we were 13 miles away. That was the closest we could get.
Even at 3am nobody was sleeping, it was a giant road side Moon Launch Party. Everybody was talking and friendly. NASA pr was top notch, they had that big rocket all lit up with giant spot lights. Even at that distance it was a sight to see! If you held your hand out at arm's length it was about 4 inches high but it looked beautiful, all painted a gleaming white. About 9am they lit it up. It was a fantastic fireball! Even from that far away it was astonishing! On thing that was surprising, there was no sound. I figured we were too far away to hear it.
I didn't have a stop watch but about 30 seconds later, the sound hit. It was overwhelming. The loudest sound I ever have heard. And it did make the ground shake. Good God what a spectacle. Made me so proud to be an American.
The conspiracy nuts say we never went to the moon. Well I don't know about that, but, By God we launched on that summer day in 1969.
This is the only launch I ever have seen. And, on tv today the guy said that Apollo 11 was 5 times more powerful than the SpaceX rocket today.
CBS will have it on the evening news if you missed it. Scratch that - was only 5 seconds on SpaceX launch and 10 minutes on the Russian space program. Go figger!?
400,000 people worked on the Apollo. if just one of them wanted to make $5,000,000 or $10,000,000, and had the slightest shred of evidence it was faked, the National Enquirer would publish the evidence tomorrow.
BTW: Without me it would have been 399,000. It wasn't faked.
I hope you didn't work on the mathematical problems.
400,000 people worked on the Apollo. if just one of them wanted to make $5,000,000 or $10,000,000, and had the slightest shred of evidence it was faked, the National Enquirer would publish the evidence tomorrow.
BTW: Without me it would have been 399,000. It wasn't faked.
I hope you didn't work on the mathematical problems.
Simon, you should have heard a Space Shuttle from THREE miles away. Or at Atlas from ONE.
I remember an early Trident missile launch in which I escorted the press videographers to a viewing site only one mile from the pad. I specifically briefed them that if it blew, they were to instantly jump down behind the dirt berm on which we were standing, because the blast wave from a high-order detonation of that kind of propellant was a high fraction of the Hiroshima bomb. It launched, got about 100 feet in the air - and blew up.
I ht the dirt, the "graphers" kept filming, and by good luck the missile did not detonate as powerfully as it could have. But it still knocked all of them enough to lose their balance and tip over their camera tripods. One helluva fireworks show! I got a dirty uniform (I was USAF at the time) and they got some very interesting video - which is the only thing they cared about.
Used to go on the top deck at work to watch daytime launches when the shuttle program was intact. All I could see ( 80 miles away) was a bright light shooting east. I missed the Challenger launch and really glad I did .