by Clara Swart
First stage LOX load complete.
T-minus two minutes.
The words are spoken so fast I almost miss them. Twelve years old and perched on the top of the family’s 2008 Honda Odyssey, my legs dangling in the open sunroof, my attention is rapt on the launch complex just a few miles away, the rocket in the center lit up against the surrounding darkness. Scattered around the edge of the base containment zone, where buildings give way to scrub and chaparral, dozens of other military members and their families look on, waiting with bated breath.
Second stage LOX load complete.
The broadcast speaks through the car’s stereo. I can hear the echo from the other cars around us, the controllers speaking jargon I don’t understand until the moment seems to climb straight out of a sci-fi movie to play out before my eyes.
Atlas V startup. FTS configured for flight.
Mission director is go for launch.
T-minus thirty seconds.
“This is it,” my dad says from the car below me. The smile in his voice is the same one that pinches my cheeks, excitement filling my stomach with butterflies.
T-minus fifteen seconds.
The voice through the radio counts down from ten, the rocket blazing with light before they reach zero.
Ignition, the voice says, already late, the broadcast streamed to my dad’s iPhone seconds behind as the rocket lifts from the pad in front of us.
Liftoff, someone must have said it, certainly, but none of the assembled viewers are listening anymore. The feat of science is so impressive, so overwhelming and otherworldly it almost feels sacred. I’d never seen anything like it.
***
When you watch a rocket launch in person, the first thing that reaches you is light. Night launches are far and away my favorite for this reason. Fire rages through concrete channels cut into the earth below the launchpad, then the rocket climbs. The rocket creeps into the sky carrying satellites towards space, a blaze of fire lifting it like a sunrise on fast-forward. The sound of the ignition lags far behind, a hush falls over the audience, the broadcast suddenly forgotten, and for a moment there is just silence and light. The moment stretches out like the marvel has warped the very nature of time, but sound races behind, raging over the landscape like a stampede.
When the noise finally reaches the assembled crowd, conversation has already begun anew, people cheer and clap into the silence, camera shutters snap, necks already craned to look up as the rocket climbs higher and higher. The sound of the rocket is deep and rumbling, but overwhelming and loud. It feels as though the very air has been pulled taut, the rocket climbing through the sky rattles and vibrates every molecule it touches to create an onslaught of noise that transposes the senses. Your ears pick up the vibrations of the air as noise, but it crawls over your skin as well, so grounded and sturdy it feels physical. All the while, standing in a clearing, seated in or on top of your car, there is no need to cover your ears, the distance just enough to keep you from harm.
As the rocket climbs higher, the light begins to fade. If you dared look away in the initial moments, you would see everything around you that had been shrouded in darkness. Your position on the base suddenly becomes clear, the valley between you and the rocket suddenly fills with light. You can make out the faces of the people around you, the colors of the cars around you. The higher the rocket gets, the more these colors slip back into darkness, the noise already fading with it. Eventually, the rocket is nothing but a speck of light curving towards the stars, a low rumble that seems to persist even after the craft is out of sight.
***
There are only a handful of places you can watch a rocket launch in the United States. The main places are Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and the closest thing I have to a hometown, Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. There are notable exceptions, like the spaceports in Virginia and Alaska that remain active, but the majority of launches take place on Vandenberg or Cape Canaveral.
I can’t remember my first encounter with Vandenberg’s mission of rocket launches. An archive of the Vandenberg launch schedules points out that the first launch I’d have been in the area for would have been the Atlas V launch that took place on September 13th, 2012, lifting off at 2:39 PM on a Thursday. In elementary school, I likely would have been herded outside, onto the blacktop where the school could watch the rocket climb into the sky before returning to the last bit of the school day and finding our way home in buses or parents’ cars. The launch that sticks the most in my memory was another Atlas V launch, on December 5th, 2013, a night launch I’ve tried to coax out of my childhood memories. Between the two of these was a number of other launches, Intercontinental Ballistic Missile—or ICBM—test launches or other rockets, like the Falcon 9 or the Delta IV Heavy.
At the time of the Atlas V launch on December 5th, I was twelve years old. My family was stressed and stretched thin with the months of trainings my dad had been attending, preparations for the deployment that would pull him away before Christmas. My dad came to Vandenberg working with satellites, leading teams that made the payloads launched up in the rockets we watched, but soon he was to be drawn away to fill an Army posting in Afghanistan. At the time, I remember existing in a limbo. His training was complete, but we didn’t know exactly when he’d leave, only that it would be soon. At nearly midnight on a weeknight, the launch would have been a late night for our family, with two twelve-year-olds and a fourteen-year-old. Even if I can’t call the memories to mind, I know those moments we spent together before my dad’s deployment were precious, all of us trying to act strong for each other as we faced down fears we’d never examined before. The launch would have wrapped us together just as they did for those around us.
Launches on Vandenberg are community events. On Vandenberg, the military launches rockets carrying satellite payloads and the Minuteman III, a land-based ICBM. The Minuteman III is launched regularly from Vandenberg, the missile disarmed and sent up as a reminder of US nuclear capabilities. Only on Vandenberg would one be exposed to enough launches that any would be named secondary, but on Vandenberg, Minuteman launches are not particularly remarkable. If these launches took place at a time of day where people might be out and about, heads would certainly turn, the missile observed like any other loud, flying object. However, most often I remember the Minuteman launches pulling me from sleep far too early before school, after I started high school and my family had moved off base and into an older house. I would drag my pillows over my head and struggle to calm my frustration as the window beside my bed rattled for minutes on end, long after the noise of the missile had faded from hearing.
Rocket launches, however, were a larger deal. Plans would be made in advance. If the launch fell outside of regular school or work hours, great effort would be made to watch it. As a teenager, I valued my sleep immensely, but even I could be dragged out of bed at five in the morning for days in a row to hope to witness a launch that was repeatedly scrubbed due to weather concerns. Usually, my dad was the one to coordinate our family viewings of launches, but as my siblings and I grew older, we began to make our own efforts. Once, when a launch took place soon after school, my brother rounded me and my sisters up in his little Ford Fiesta and we joined a caravan of cars driving on base, finding our way to a viewing site on an open parking lot that had been outfitted with bleachers to host the spectators that weren’t from the area. We parked in the dirt with the other locals, meanwhile, my parents texted us from wherever they’d found to view the launch; did you find a spot? Are you watching? Five minutes left!
During my sophomore year of high school, NASA’s InSight spacecraft launched from Vandenberg aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas-V rocket, headed to Mars to examine Mars’s crust, mantle, and core. The result of the launch was a flood of scientists and industry personnel to Vandenberg, of which the little community took full advantage. The schools lined up speakers from various companies and agencies. The high school was visited by people from ULA, NASA, and Northrop Grumman. Merchandise was handed out, posters, fliers, lanyards, business cards we would never use. Watch parties were organized for the day of the launch. Even my local church—perched on a hill overlooking the town of Lompoc, the closest town to Vandenberg itself—was a hub of activity, hosting anyone who wanted to come and watch, streaming the ULA broadcast to the assembled crowd in the church courtyard. The launch itself wasn’t all the community hoped it would be. At 4:05 AM, the fog Vandenberg is often known for had yet to clear, so most of the viewing was done through camera lenses close enough to make out the rocket, the images passed along to TV screens as we listened to the broadcasters speak over the rumble of the rocket.
I have no doubt all those who make it to Vandenberg to see a launch leave with the feeling they have witnessed something very special. It’s certainly not every day you see thousands of pounds of top-tier US technology launched into space on a plume of fire. However, there is a deeper meaning I suspect those outside the community would have difficulty seeing. Rocket launches are the most visible piece of Vandenberg’s mission, and as a result they become a representation of the community’s goals. From a scientific perspective, they show the dedication of thousands of people to technological advancement, GPS, Starlink, NASA weather projects and Mars exploration missions. From another perspective, they depict a base full of people who’ve dedicated themselves to protecting their country, keeping their families safe and advancing the nation towards similar goals. Personal issues and politics dog Vandenberg like any other community, but the launches don’t stop. Launches become the community’s lifeblood, a physical manifestation of the people’s collective effort, a blazing, brilliant success.
At twelve, this was a meaning I had not yet grasped. I understood the feat of science playing out before me was awe-inspiring, but I had yet to gather the depth of its meaning. Even after watching eight years’ worth of Vandenberg launches, I’m sure there are pieces that are lost on me, but the community understanding is not. From a town that never makes it on a map, forever mispronounced by well-meaning people, there is a community that creates world-wide news sending science to the stars, and the people that bring it about are more valuable than any rocket.
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Clara Swart is a recent graduate from Emerson College in Boston. When she isn’t writing, she can be found skiing, traveling, or petting the nearest dog.
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