Today I had a great day at NASA. I've come back to the space coast in Florida to see the space shuttle Endeavor blast off, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Around noon, I was invited out with a group of other Twitter peeps to see the RRS Rollback event. This is the slow-motion but exciting time when they peel away to the Rotating Service Structure to reveal the shuttle. It was so awesome that I almost forgot to send a tweet.
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So, when I took this, I was using two different cameras. The first one was my D3X with the 28-300mm lens on a tripod, and that is how I got this one. It’s an HDR from a single RAW.
Not long after this, the buffer filled up and it started to shoot slowly, so I went to my second camera around my neck, the D3S with a 50mm prime. And I got this shot.
- Trey Ratcliff
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I had some time during the day while at NASA to visit the Kennedy Space Center. Inside was the insanely huge Saturn V rocket. It's one of those things that would hurt like hell if you dropped it on your toe.
The shuttle only has one more launch before it is forever mothballed, like this... The final launch of the Atlantis is on July 8, the first day of my 40th revolution around the sun. That's kinda cool I think...
- Trey Ratcliff
Read more here at the Stuck in Customs blog.
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I'll try to describe the sound. Since this is as close as you can get, and this is 3 miles away, it takes a while for the sound to get to you. And it does rush across the water in a rumbling, tumbling way like you might expect. But then, after that, something other than sound starts to come across the water. It's a series of concussive waves that vibrate your entire skeleton and thrum through your soul. It's not a steady din of vibration, but a violent staccato rhythm of unseen forces that cause a tremulous cadence around and through your chest. This is the final space shuttle launch of our lives. And so we could not help but be reminded of this finality when this unearthly sound combined with the final sight of the lonely craft arcing away into space.
- Trey Ratcliff
Read more here at the Stuck in Customs blog.
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This photo was a bit of an accident.
I was as close as humanly possible to the launch, on the edge of the media area in the NASA compound. When the shuttle blasts off, there is a long delay before you hear the thing. Right when I took this, the first staccato wave ripped through my skeleton. I think I just hit the trigger out of fear and shock combined! But, it came out pretty good, all the same.
- Trey Ratcliff
Read the rest here at the Stuck in Customs blog.
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