About a year ago, we posted a story about our first attempt to watch a rocket launch (Titusville and New Smyrna: Poor Social Distancing and Rockets). This involved taking the boat out from the Titusville marina, anchoring, waiting, and hearing “Abort” right after 0 was reached. Unfortunately, we left Titusville to head north the next day, so we did not end up seeing that mission when it actually launched a few days later.

We may not have mentioned this, but we had another near miss as we were working our way south late last year. As we were getting closer to Titusville, we were keeping an eye on the whether or not there would be a launch. Unfortunately, when we were still over 50 miles away, we discovered that there was indeed one scheduled, but we would be unable to get south to see it since it was on a Friday night. We were bummed since we just missed it by a day as we’d be heading to Titusville on Saturday! Since we didn’t have any specific plans on Saturday, we had a lazy morning and started our journey. As we were under way, about 30 miles from Titusville, we hear something on Channel 16 from the Coast Guard about a launch. A little Googling and we discovered that the Friday night launch had been aborted and the new window was around noon on Saturday!! We did actually see the streak in the sky as the rocket launched right in front of us, but we felt a bit stupid since we would have been able to see it from up close if we had realized it had been rescheduled and gotten up earlier to make it to the viewing spot in time!

Now, heading back through the Space Coast on our way north, one of the reasons we chose Cocoa Village for our extended work-project stay was in the hopes that during our time here, we would be able to see a launch up close. The opportunity presented itself when a scheduled launch coincided when a friend of mine who works for Blue Origin would be in the area for a work trip. The launch was scheduled for 9pm and she had a rental car, so we drove to a spot very near the launch site, where we could see (through binoculars) the smoke around the rocket as it was being filled/prepared for launch. We laid out a picnic blanket and tuned in to the audio coverage of the launch. We hear the countdown, but this time we hear the “Abort” call with several minutes still to spare on the countdown. Disappointment!!

The launch was rescheduled for the next day, so we made plans to do the same, since Sara was still here that day. Unfortunately, during the day, the launch was delayed again and Sara headed back home to Seattle. The launch was delayed for several more days, and then finally happened at 3:30am, which we didn’t realize, so we missed it completely.

Then, David and I got a bit neglectful of checking the page (turns out I was looking at the wrong page), and we ended up missing an 8pm launch last week!

It seemed our luck was running out as this is our last week here, before we head north again. In the mean time, David had found a twitter feed that he could subscribe to for alerts about launches. Last night at 2:30am, just as he was about to go to bed, he got a notice that there would be a launch at 4:30am. He set his alarm and we woke up in time to sit on the bow and watch! We’re about 10ish miles away from the launch site here, so we didn’t have an up close view, but it was still pretty incredible, and a few minutes after the launch, we could hear the rumble. Since it was night, it was very peaceful, and the sound seemed to fill the bay. What a beautiful experience!!