It finally happened.
Artemis was moved back to the launch pad in October and then Hurricane Nicole came through. Artemis was rated for 89mph max winds but NASA decided to leave Artemis out. Hurricane Nicole ended up creating winds just over 100mph on the launch pad and Artemis stood up to it. I was expecting them to have to bring it back in for repairs but they decided they could make the repairs to the damaged seals on the launch pad.
Artemis was scheduled to launch November 16th at 1:04 AM. We started watching online when the fueling operations started around 3PM on Tuesday November 15th. Everything was going good so we left the house just before 8PM. When we were almost to our spot in Titusville they reported another leak. Of course we were expecting another scrub. We parked under the bridge in Titusville and Adri busted out her blankets and took a nap in the bed of the truck. Everyone else was sleeping in the truck while I was there watching online waiting for them to scrub. I think around 10:30 or 11 they send out the red team to fix the seal. An hour later they reported the seal was fixed but they were now having issues with an Airforce network switch that communicates to the kill switch. Of course I'm thinking BS, they never fixed the seal but didn't want to admit it's the third failure of a leak. They had to replace the switch with a new one. I work in IT so I'm thinking great its going to take them forever to setup this switch. Well they had it done in about an hour.
Around the time Artemis was supposed to launch they still didn't have a new launch time but they said they were expecting to have one soon and thought it would be between 1:45 and the top of the hour. I decided to run to the bathroom 1/4 mile away again and noticed that since the bar had closed there were quite a few open parking spots. When I came out of the bathroom I heard a bunch of people cheering, and it wasn't for me. I ran back to the truck knowing this meant they had the go to launch so I told Adri to wake her butt up and get in the truck. We had 8 minutes til launch so we moved the truck by the bar and got a spot with a better view.
We got to our spot with 5 minutes to launch. I thought for sure Dean was going to be grumpy and would sleep through the launch. He woke up excited and walked over on his own and stayed awake for the entire thing.
At 1:47AM it finally happened. The Indian River went from pitch black to looking like it was daylight. The first few seconds they burn the main hydrogen RS-25 engines, which don't have enough power to get Artemis off the ground. About 5-10 seconds later they hit the solid rocket boosters on the side. The rocket was well up in the air and we were hearing nothing. Right about at a minute after launch we could start to hear the rumble but it wasn't all that impressive. That is because we were only hearing the RS-25 engines. Then a few seconds later the rumble increased when the sound from the solid rocket boosters kicked in.
Shortly after we could see the two solid rocket boosters break off. The whole show was about 3 minutes. Three trips and all that waiting but it was without a doubt worth it to see the biggest rocket launch ever, so far.
My video from 9 miles away from Artemis. You don't hear anything until a minute into the video.
Watching this feed was annoying. Mostly looking at the obviously fake and overly white teeth on that chick in the middle. Looks ridiculous.
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