Thursday February 12th 2009. Launch -63 days.

 

Today I took a day off. Having worked, according to the time clock, 108 hours in the first 10 days of the month, plus more hours when I get home each night, it was time for a rest. In the morning, the most strenuous thing that I did was to visit the post office and to get a haircut. What’s more, after weeks of cold, wet weather, it was a beautiful day. In the afternoon I started work cleaning and tidying for my guests this evening: they might not notice if the house is not clean, but I will! Vacuuming, washing the floors, polishing, tidying: everything looked so much better after. Mind you, I was so tired that I fell asleep afterwards.

 

Two colleagues arrived around 9pm, one of them bearing a rather good bottle of wine, the other bearing spaghetti. I set the table, prepared salads, hors d’œuvre, etc. We had an excellent supper and then sat back to watch the launch on the Internet.

 

I have only watched one launch live: a Space Shuttle launch bearing John Glenn and the Spanish astronaut Pedro Duque (who is a real gentleman and a very, very nice guy): almost always it’s been ion TV, or on the Internet. However, even if NASA has a slicker TV presentation and better cameras in-flight, the launch of an Ariane 5 is truly impressive. In my opinion an Ariane 5 launch beats the Shuttle hollow. Last night night was falling at Kourou as the broadcast started, 20 minutes before launch and it was completely dark at the time that the Ariane blasted off. One of my colleagues had not previously seen a launch and was very impressed. It was fun talking about previous launches and pointing out the little details in the images that the casual viewer will miss, but that are highly significant if you know what is going on.

 

We all laughed as the accustomed “5… 4… 3… 2… 1… lift-off!” that we have been used to over the years was replaced with the French “Cinq, quatre, trois… deux… un… TOC!” The word “toc” does not quite capture the forces that are unleashed at that moment. There were some lovely images of the moorings separating as the rockets fired.

 

The launch was singularly without drama, much to our relief and, in fact, the whole flight was completely without drama. Ariane 5 launches are getting to be quite routine now. For us though, the best part of the whole show were the final words “next launch: April 16”. That’s us!