It was a humid morning and I left the cabin with my senses heightened, knowing that I would feel very different when I returned. I climbed the stairs towards the upper deck and joined some of the crew who had already assembled to watch the dawn lift off. It was a beautiful morning, the air was still and hot and a sallow sun stretched itself above the horizon, unsure whether it was just too early in the day to start and turn up the heat. I smiled across at Captain Francola, a genial Italian with flawless manners with whom I had shared many emergencies at sea. Ahead of us was Cape Canaveral, launch pad of the mighty Saturn rockets that carried the Apollo flights and a generation of American dreams into the heavens on their journey to the moon. A lone surveillance aircraft droned overhead patrolling the edges of an exclusion zone that had been in effect since early morning. After what seemed like a long period of inactivity, we busied ourselves by pointing binoculars towards the complex hoping to see even a small glint of light coming from the launchpad. For a moment I thought about the immortal words of David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’
"10 Ground control to Major Tom
9 - 8 - 7 - 6 Commencing countdown, engines on
5 - 4 - 3 - 2 Check ignition
1 And may God's love be with you Lift-off"
I caught my breath and waited. And then it happened, a startled bird on the wing, a change in the essence of the wind, a small shiver down the spine, a definite faint yellow light at the edge of the far horizon. The light continued to grow, ever increasing in brilliance until suddenly the white cumulus clouds on the horizon erupted into a brilliant golden glow as a pillar of fire detached itself from its umbilical tower and started its journey heavenward. There was an explosion of colour as a spectacular shower of yellow-gold sparkles fell from the sky and a hundred birds rose from a nearby sandbar and silhouetted themselves against the fiery orange horizon. For a moment, time itself seemed to hang and there was stillness in the air, like the strange silence that descends upon the savannah just before the rains come. Then the heavens trembled, as if Jupiter had suddenly awoken from his slumbers and released a thousand thunderbolts to resound throughout the firmament. I watched in silence, feeling privileged to witness man’s challenge to the Gods, this wondrous spectacle that defied our very mortality and carried our emotions, our pain and our joy in a fire of golden dust upwards into the heavens. Then it came, like a growl from depth of the cosmos, a roar that gained in strength and momentum as the shuttle lifted itself from its buttresses and rose on the wings of Mercury in a northerly arc over the waters of the Atlantic. In a dream, I watched it climb as the bright saffron glow gradually began to dissolve back into the crimson colours of an eastern sunset and like an arc torch that had lost its flame, it softened and swirled into a canvas of reds and greys that melted back into the light of a coming dawn. For a while, it seemed as if the very clouds themselves were loath to lose their fiery tones, hesitant, ever generous to the onlooker, but then they bled and dripped in ruby hues down onto the stubby glide wings of the craft and lit up the billows of exhaust clouds that followed in its wake. By now, many of the other crew had gathered, standing around in suspended silence, following the trail of exhaust gases that were wont to ignite in glory as the differing stages of the shuttle separated and fell back to earth. The air around us became thin and heady and suddenly everybody started clapping as we watched the shuttle climb higher and higher into space. In the haze of the morning, I thought about the men inside the shuttle, those special people who regarded the challenge of space travel as part of their daily existence. Captain Francolla turned towards me grinning, his eyes now had a different quality and we both knew there was no need to say anything. It was then that the words of the song returned,
"Am I sitting in a tin can Far above the world
Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do
Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles
I'm feeling very still and I think my spaceship knows which way to go
Tell my wife I love her very much she knows"
The Space Shuttle Columbia mentioned above crashed ten years later on February 1st 2003, when it disintegrated over Texas during re-entry into the Eart's athmosphere. Unfortunately, it occurred with the loss of all seven crew, shortly before it was scheduled to conclude its 28th mission. The loss of the Columbia was caused by damage sustained during launch when a piece of foam insulation the size of a small briefcase and known as the Left Bipod Foam Ramp broke off the main propellant tank under the forces of launch. The debris struck the left wing on the number 8 (RCC) tile, damaging the Shuttle's thermal protection system (TPS). While Columbia was still in orbit, some engineers suspected damage, but NASA managers limited the investigation on the grounds that little could be done even if problems were found
The Port of Canaveral was also home to some of the finest cruise terminals in the world. In October 1993, Carnival Cruise Lines gave Port Canaveral its first mega cruise vessel by home-porting the M.S. Fantasy there. I worked as a Ships Physician on board the vessel in 1994 and while in port was privileged to watch the spectacular dawn lift off of the late SS Columbia on its five million mile, fourteen day journey into space.