Joel Aelwyn

Well, we managed it: I finally got to see a Shuttle launch. Yes, there was a two-week delay due to the failed APU during the first launch attempt, but the second attempt went off flawlessly, without any delays at all.

Deb and Amy both took photos of the 12 seconds or so we could watch (due to a low cloud ceiling immediately over the launch pad, it rapidly vanished from sight), and I'll probably arrange to post some of them once they're available. But really, the view isn't all that different from what you can see on TV or from any number of sources. Though it is easy, given cameras auto-adjusting brightness, to not really get a good feel for how *bright* the flame pillar is. Imagine the sun nearing the horizon, but not yet into the “big red ball” that is easy to look at stage. Rather, imagine it at the point when it just starts to become possible to look at it for more than a split second, but not really comfortable. That's about the right equivalent.

What you don't get — and barring both an incredible sound system and audio that they don't broadcast *can't* get — is the sound. Imagine a really, really *good* thunderclap, about a quarter to a half mile away. The sort that if it were right overhead, would have you hunting for clean underwear. Now imagine that sound going on for a good thirty seconds or more, solid, without getting any quieter. That's at 3-5 miles away (as close as they will let anyone get; out to roughly 1200 feet, the overpressure of the "sound" — shock waves, really — is enough to be lethal, and it will permanently deafen you well beyond that range).

And when it *does* quiet down, it isn't by much; it shifts into the deepest roaring rumble you can imagine, right down on the very edge of hearing. In fact, a fair portion of it is below "hearing", and is instead felt as a distinct "throbbing" of the volume rising and falling. That lasts for a good couple of minutes; you can still hear it — clearly! — when it is something well over 50 *miles* downrange.

To sum it up another way:

“Hey, we're going to strap you on top of the equivalent of a tactical nuclear warhead and light the other end, if everything works out it should fling you off the planet.”

A yield equivalent to kilotons of high explosives… by way of using kilotons of high explosives.

Unfortunately getting the full effect requires having a login, but take a look at the e-incode site. Now, imagine that there are now half a dozen drop-down menus across the top instead of two, and that the left sidebar is filled past the bottom of the screen with navigation links (both presented reasonable sanely, mind you). Last of all, imagine that the content seen on the login page is all still there, but there is enough additional content above it to push the images to the bottom of the page.

Now try to find the training site link.

Fail #1 (minor/arguable): having both top bar and side bar navigation is usually confusing to the user. There are ways to make it work, but this site doesn't really do them properly.

Fail #2 (significant): neither the top bar nor the side bar have a link to the training site, despite the fact that it is a fairly major destination for folks coming to this page, *and* the fact that many folks looking for it will be coming to this page *for the first time*.

Fail #3 (significant, but compounded with #2 becomes FAIL): making the training link a graphic that is the same size, shape, *and* position on the screen (for normal-size screens) as a banner ad, *and* occurs below a "demo" graphic of the same type that *says* "demo" near the left-hand side (thus making it look even more like a banner ad).

It literally took me ten minutes to find the stupid thing, because I have (like so many others on the 'Net today) a strong mental filter / "blind spot" to catch banner ads. I literally *did not see it*. Yes, the photons went from the screen to my eyes, and I'm fairly sure my optic nerve continued to work, but the "front end" pattern recognition in my brain that turns a visual signal into meaning information -- the act of "seeing" -- filtered it out of my perception. Entirely. To the point that when I finished hunting every obvious place on the page I *still* didn't see it.

I had to go check the email a couple of times, and be sure I was in the right spot, and think about the unlikelyhood of them not having *some* training link on the front page, before I went back and started looking at the page in a very deliberate "item by item" search. Even then I almost skipped over it.