ULA | exploRVistas

Melbourne Beach, Florida – March 15, 2022 – Written by Jim

If there is any one thing that sums up this winter on Florida’s Space Coast, it has been the increased number of launches from previous years. We’ve seen a total of eighteen successful launches and one launch failure so far. There are two more rockets scheduled to head to orbit before we depart Florida. Two of the successes were ULA Atlas V rockets and all of the rest were SpaceX Falcon 9’s. The failure was a tiny 45 foot tall Astra rocket that tumbled out of control after it was out of our view. That ended up in the Atlantic Ocean. It is interesting to note that the first launch we saw this season was a crewed flight, as will be the last one at the end of March.

Normally, people tend to favor seeing the night launches the best.

There is just something special about seeing the changing colors of the exhaust plume as the craft soars overhead.

Oddly enough, our favorite launch of the year occurred in the late afternoon. That one was a SpaceX CSG-2 mission that flew south, just off the coast. It went right by us. The stages separated almost directly above us, with the first stage turning around and flying back to the cape and landing. I had my camera on it the entire flight and caught this video:

The only thing that might have made it better is if had occurred the day before, as originally planned. The skies were even clearer then. Unfortunately, Royal Caribbean’s Harmony of the Seas decided to leave Port Canaveral and sail into the Coast Guard exclusion zone, which forced a launch scrub. An investigation is underway on that.

In addition to that video, I set my iPhone on a tripod for that mission and, using the Slow Shutter app, I captured this composite:

This is basically a time exposure. The ascending rocket is the solid line that angles to the right. The interrupted line is the returning booster…with the upper line being the entry (into the atmosphere) burn and the lower line being the landing burn. That is my all time personal favorite! Perhaps had the launch occurred the previous day, this wouldn’t have been so interesting. 😊

So has this season been all launches? Not by a long shot! We were fortunate to see the return of our Canadian friends this year, as the border has reopened between the U.S. and Canada. Our park is much more entertaining when everybody is here! We’ve had twice-weekly shuffleboard tournaments, which is something new this season.

Mark is our line judge; a job he obviously takes seriously.

We’ve had visits from our friends Terry & Diane, Rod & Mary and a contingent of college pals.

Here we are celebrating Jake Jump’s win in Lakeland where he pitched for Fontbonne University. We’ve seen him every year he’s played in Florida. This is his senior year and the end of an era. Dad Jim is taking the photo. We also met up for a rocket launch in Cocoa Beach:

Get your cameras ready. 3…2…1…

…and we have liftoff!

I’ve added a new fixture to our flagpole this year, to let people know when the launches are going to be. It started out as this:

Well, that doesn’t really cover all of the NASA, Blue Origin, ULA and Astra launches that take place, so we updated to this:

I had this flag custom made. That gets the job done! Our neighbors have come to rely on it. 😊

One last thing that is new this winter is my purchase of a new guitar! I haven’t played I probably 25 years, and my old 12-string Guild is in disrepair in our storage room in Michigan. I purchased a Zager 6-string and have started online lessons through Justin Guitar. So much is available online now that wasn’t when I learned back in high school! I was always a strummer and never learned how to pick. That is changing, as I’ve already learned a lot in the month I’ve had it. Our friends Becky and Joe had their musician neighbors Barbara and Jason from Montana visiting here, and Jason asked to borrow my guitar one evening. Here’s a little video of the two of them, with Barbara on her octave mandolin.

My goal is to play like that. Such a light touch!

So that’s about it for now. We are gearing up for a summer’s worth of work on our cabin in Michigan, so stay tuned for that! We are done with subcontractors, so it is Diana and I making it happen from here on out. Lots to do for one summer; hopefully it is complete by the time we head back south! Until next time, safe and happy travels to all!

February 2021 – Melbourne Beach, Florida

Written by Jim

If you’ve assumed that we have rocketed off of the face of the Earth, you can rest assured that we have not. We have been hanging out in our winter hideout on the Space Coast of Florida in what can only be described as the oddest winter yet. Several of our neighbors decided to remain home this year, due to the continuing pandemic. The park has a different feel, as a result. We sure do miss seeing our friends! And even though Florida is pretty much ‘open for business’, many of the activities we would normally do (Bingo, weekly lunches, meat shoot at the Moose Lodge, etc.) aren’t happening. We choose not to go into restaurants or indoor venues right now, and our grocery trips are stealth…early and fast.

With that being said, this season has been anything but a bust. SpaceX and ULA (United Launch Alliance) have been busy providing us plenty of free entertainment, and we’ve taken a few drives to see what’s happening in the area. One of those drives was to the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, just north of Kennedy Space Center. As is usually the case for us, the wildlife provided us a few new gems.

This gator was showing off his two-step shuffle for us.

This Great Egret found a nice shady spot to hang out.

These Roseate Spoonbills were tempting fate hanging out with this large gator. There were quite a few spoonbills, alligators, herons ducks, and a Bald Eagle to be seen that day. We even saw an armadillo, but couldn’t get a photo of it. Always worth the hour drive up there.

As we mentioned, Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station have been busy! Most of the activity has been centered around SpaceX. They have two launch pads at their disposal, and they keep them hopping.

We’ve seen eleven SpaceX missions launched since we’ve arrived on November 1. One of them had four astronauts on board, which adds a whole different dynamic to watching it. We feel the night launches are the prettiest, although the one shown above was pretty cool. It was a polar launch that flew almost directly over our heads! One of the launches landed its booster back at the Cape (which we could see) and it produced two loud sonic booms as it came back in.

In addition to the SpaceX launches, we saw two ULA missions. One was a Delta IV Heavy, which is three boosters strapped together.

That one was not only bright, but very loud.

This particular ULA launch occurred at sunset. It used a single liquid-fueled booster with several solid rocket boosters attached to it that leave a long contrail. The setting sun (out of the picture to the left) really added to the colors of this one.

One day, while running errands, we spotted a SpaceX booster in Port Canaveral when crossing the Cocoa Causeway. We detoured up to the port to check it out.

To the right, the sooty cylinder with the legs on the bottom is Falcon 9 booster #1060.5. The “.5” means it has flown 5 missions. In the foreground is the SpaceX drone ship Of Course I Still Love You, which is basically a large barge that the booster lands on in the Atlantic Ocean. “Large” is a relative term, considering the fact that SpaceX parks it off of the coast of North Carolina, launches the rocket 120 miles into space and lands the first stage booster on it. Kind of like looking for a grain of sand in a roomful of thick carpet. Most times the landings are successful, saving the company millions of dollars. Some of the launches don’t require as much fuel to be used, so they are able to reverse the direction on those boosters and land them back at the Cape. Simply amazing.

As most of you know, we are planning on building a cabin on our property in Michigan this summer. That project has been the main focus for us this winter.

It won’t be long before a structure appears on the bare spot of land in the above photo. Having built the barn last summer, we know the drill, as far as permitting and securing our subcontractors goes. As of this point, everything is on schedule. The biggest hurdle has been the tremendous increase in lumber prices. The housing market is booming. As a result, those lumber prices aren’t going down anytime soon…so we bite the bullet and keep moving.

We’ve also been getting ideas watching home improvement shows on HGTV. One of our favorites is Home Town, which is set in Laurel, Mississippi.

Ben and Erin Napier take on a different run-down house in their hometown of Laurel and restore it for the new homeowners during each episode. Their ability as craftspeople to create something from nothing is really fun to watch. We have picked up a few ideas from them to incorporate into our place, also with some new ways to refer to things we already had planned. We already were going to use vinyl plank flooring, but learned that the correct term is LVT…or as they say in Mississippi, “Luxury VAHHHnl TAAAAHhll”. 🙂 Watching these two is much more entertaining than most of the other programming choices these days! Check them out, if you haven’t already done so.

So until next time, here’s to staying healthy and well. Stay tuned for updates on our cabin and, as always…safe and happy travels to all!