Space Launch Perspective
A Friendly Adventure
by Anne Powell
We walked in the front door, threw our bags and coats on the floor next to the sofa as always and collapsed onto the furniture. My roommates and I had gone to the boys' place but this was going to be a slow Friday evening. Titus would be late, working security. James out of town on a film shoot. John was always sleepy and the rest of us were tired. Somehow, half of us ended up lounging on the floor, leaning against the furniture it was too much work to sit in. We chatted about nothing much until Titus got back. He walked in the door in his blue suit, his briefcase in hand, and down the hall to his room without greeting. Late shift. He returned in khakis and joined us on the floor, leaning against the video console and propping his feet against the sofa. He was quiet.
"It's only 10:30 ," I sighed, "and the party is dead."
Titus interrupted as I started falling asleep, "Well, who wants to go camping in Mojave to see the space shuttle launch on Monday morning?"
I woke up on the word, "Camping?"
"Yeah, Bill and Ally and John and I are going to see the spaceship launch."
Spaceship? There are still spaceships? I thought nowadays they only sent robots to Mars to discover rocks.
"I need to start reading the news."
On Saturday afternoon, I was staring into my cupboards, thinking of what we'd need for a 5 hour camping experience, when my mom called and asked me to come to dinner with the family that night. Before she hung up, I stopped her.
"Wait — could you bring me a sleeping bag, Mommy?"
"Let me check — Hold on." On the line, I could hear the door to the garage squeak open and my mom shuffling around as she started talking to herself. "Well, it should be—but maybe—I may have washed it—Oh, here. We can bring it."
"Thank you Mommy." I gave her a kiss over the phone and hung up.
I hadn't seen my family since I borrowed the same sleeping bag to go to Big Bear, a month before. I'd dropped it off when they weren't home.
My mom and dad and sister hugged me in the parking lot of the restaurant.
My dad asked, "Where'd you go in Big Bear?"
"Mary Renée's family has a cabin up there. We had a good time." I started giggling, "At this one place, we ended up having a rock fight."
My mom shook her head, "Didn't your mother teach you any better?"
"She tried, but I wasn't paying attention."
She shook her head again, "I don't know what I'm going to do with you," and turned her attention to her menu.
"Which side of the city were you on?" my dad asked.
"I don't know. The side with the trees on it?"
"I remember when Paul Benson and I used to go up there." He went silent, reaching back into his 20s. "What do you need the sleeping bag for now?"
"Mary Renée and Jenn and John and Titus and I are going camping in Mojave tomorrow night and we'll see the space shuttle launch Monday morning."
"You're going to see the space shuttle launch?" he whispered. He stared at me through his thick gold-framed glasses.
"Yeah. Titus told us about it last night and we're all going. It's gonna be the first time a private civilian goes to space. Or something."
"Where are you camping? When are you going? How is it designed? Who sponsored it?"
I repeated everything Titus had told us but couldn't answer all his questions.
After dinner, we walked out to our cars and my dad slipped his arm in mine, "It's great that you get to do that. I remember when Paul Benson and I took off in my MG . . ."
I smiled. The number of times I'd heard it, I remembered too.
We left Sunday evening after meeting at the guys' house. Titus took shotgun and Jenn and John and I squeezed into the back of Mary Renée's Saturn. It was nearly a two hour drive and when we pulled onto the gravel trail of Red Rock Canyon State Park, it was already dark. The campfire Bill and Ally had already started was casting vague red shadows against the rock wall backing our campsite. It was a harbor of desert brush. Titus wandered off to climb the cliffs behind us and Mary Renée started grilling bratwurst. After we ate and drank hot chocolate and toasted s'mores, we climbed up to a spot Titus found to look at the stars. Titus and John, with heaps of blankets and sleeping bags in their arms, helped us ladies up the path. We laid out the blankets and settled down to stare upward and shout out at shooting stars.By half past 2 , Bill and Ally had already left long before and we'd lost John to his sleeping bag. Mary Renée and Jenn and I climbed into our tent, which didn't quite fit three girls and continued talking to Titus through the nylon wall as he sat up in a camp chair.
Mary Renée and Jenn drifted off, but I couldn't sleep and soon heard the gravel crunching along the road.
"I wonder what Titus is doing."
I did fall asleep but always felt like I was about to wake up. When I heard "it's time to get up" through the wall of the tent at 3:45 , I was already awake and managed a high-pitched, though tired, "hello." Mary Renée and Jenn groaned as I unzipped the tent and crawled out. Titus was standing by the campfire, boiling water for us; he'd already tried to rouse the others. John took a few minutes then joined us, then Mary Renée, then Jenn. Bill and Ally took a little longer.
John pulled out a pack of cloves. "Yuck," I thought. "What kind of person smokes first thing in the morning?" And I remembered. This was not morning.
We stopped at a McDonald's for coffee. Bill and Ally decided they weren't coming after all and went home. We shrugged and drove to the Air Force Base, found a cozy little piece of asphalt near the runway, staked our claim with the blanket we'd brought and tried to fall asleep again leaning against each other. My head was on Titus's shoulder and Mary Renée's and Titus's heads on mine; Jenn and John were on the side farthest from me and the runway.
Somebody moved.
Everybody adjusted.
Somebody else moved.
We all adjusted again.
We tried not to fidget and waited for sunrise. I'd never been fond of the desert but the red sun transformed the miles of dust and Joshua trees.
Near 7:00 , SpaceShipOne pulled onto the runway and the crowd cheered – I was disappointed. So much for my childhood notions of space travel. It looked like a mutant airplane.
We followed the ship's takeoff and tried to watch as the rocket gained height and
circled the sky but the desert glare stung our eyes.
Everyone decided in favor of their eyesight and the crowd settled onto their
makeshift campsites along the runway.
For more than an hour, the spaceship drifted in and out of sight and interest as
Titus told us about a set of sculptures his brother was working on, John went back
to sleep and Mary Renée tried to defend her reasons for thinking "pummel" was a
friendly word.
When the rocket made the last push through the atmosphere, the crowd stood and waited for it to reappear. Only nervous shuffling and the announcements over the loudspeaker about the ship's altitude broke the silence. Mary Renée leaned toward me and whispered, "I wonder if it's dark up there."
Then SpaceShipOne reappeared, a dot against the dirty sky and the crowd broke into cheers. Two booms shook the air as the rocket broke the sound barrier and began to glide back to the runway. People immediately started packing up and made a dash for the parking lot. We stayed to watch it land and walked slowly back to the car.
"We're a part of living history now," Titus mused.
I turned toward him. "Really?"
"Maybe in 40 years, we'll go to space . . ."
I stopped by my family's house a couple weeks later to drop off their sleeping bag again. "Well, how was the launch?" my dad asked.
"It was great — just dropping everything, camping out, staying up almost all night, going to space shuttle launches — the usual."
"You do all sorts of crazy things, you and your friends."
"Yeah, they're great."
"When I was young I used to be like that — just doing whatever. Sometimes, we didn't know where we were going."
Sitting on the sofa, I looked up at my dad as he stood over me, and smiled. He turned around and wandered back toward the garage where he had been working on the same '67 British sports car he drove when he was young.
"I remember the summer Paul Benson and I took off across the Midwest in my MG," he said
"We had the top down . . ."