Schaumburg's Larson at shuttle launch
Schaumburg Mayor Al Larson, an eyewitness to the final launch of the space shuttle Atlantis said it was as dramatic as it was historic.
“A gigantic plume springs up from around the liftoff area and just powers up, up, up into the sky until it disappears into the clouds,” Larson reported in real time, from the VIP viewing area at Banana Creek. “And at the apex of that plume is the shuttle.”
Larson was among 5,000 people just at that particular viewing area. With him was his daughter, Catherine Koerner, who's now deputy manager of NASA's International Space Station Vehicle Office, and her husband and fellow NASA employee, Steve.
It was at his daughter's invitation that Larson was able to have such a prime front-row seat for the final chapter in NASA's 30-year-old shuttle program.
The crowd at his viewing area sat on bleachers along a waterfront, which lit up when the shuttle's rockets fired.
“It was not as loud as I thought it would be, but you can still feel a tremor,” Larson said. “Very inspiring! It was an emotional moment.”
Koerner called it, “the bittersweet end to a unique era of human spaceflight.”
Koerner has a unique perspective — she once worked in the space shuttle program. Now both she and her husband have secure jobs involving the International Space Station.
Larson said that during a dinner the night before the launch, a NASA speaker assured the room that they were present at the turn of a chapter, not the end of the space agency.
“He said, ‘This is not the end of NASA, despite what the media says. There are other things to be done,'” Larson said.
As Friday's countdown entered its final 15 minutes, Larson said the anxious audience was told everything was still a go. The clouds that had been a threat to the liftoff timetable were beginning to disperse, and it was getting very hot.
There was an approximate two-minute delay in the countdown, with the clock stopped at 31 seconds, while launch control used video cameras to verify that the gaseous oxygen vent arm had moved out of the shuttle's path, Koerner said. With that confirmed, the countdown proceeded.
As huge a moment as the launch and the minutes immediately afterward were, Larson said he isn't looking forward to the bus ride back to Orlando, where he and many of the other viewers are staying.
What would normally be a two-hour trip was expected to take between five and six hours due to the intense traffic leaving the parking lots around the Kennedy Space Center.