analyze – i has it

I want to see a space shuttle launch.

I’ve always wanted to see a space shuttle launch

When I was younger, I used to wake up at 3 in the morning just so I could watch the space shuttle launch or land. In fact, I would sleep in the TV room with my digital watch smashed between my head gear (for my teeth) and my ear. That way I would hear my alarm go off and wouldn’t have to get up but could just turn the TV on.

Alex and I used to take cardboard box lids and draw “complicated” gauges and dials on them and number pads and position them all around us as we lay on the floor and did simulated rocket launches.

I watched Space Camp and the Challenger Investigation video so much that the VHS tapes were almost burnt up.

I would record hours and hours of NASA TV on tapes and not let ANYONE touch them because I might just want to watch that launch or landing again. Incidentally, I’ve never watched any of those VHS videos again, but I kept them, just in case

During college my desire didn’t go away, but got preempted by the less exciting but more important aspects of education. I did however get the chance to see an Astronaut speak once and watched as many launches as I could be near my computer for.

When I heard that the space shuttle was going to be retired in 2010 I resolved in my heart to see a launch before I it retired. Last year at Iowa State, with the help of family, Laura and I decided that we would try to go see a launch sometime this year. What with her school and scheduling a trip around a particular launch, it’s been difficult to get the trip off the ground.

This week, the pieces are finally falling into place. Actually the first piece fell into place last summer when my parents graciously gave us permission to use their resort in Orlando for our vacation. This was for my Birthday last year on June 1. I also got some graduation money from other relatives and placed it in the “Florida” fund.  It didn’t work out to go down that summer (2008) because of my new job and I was already taking time off for Boundary Waters. During the school year, it’s almost impossible to get Laura a week off, so that left this summer 2009.

As the winter months ticked by I watched the launch schedule weekly if not daily. Unfortunately, there were no launches scheduled for this summer. There was one in May, and one in August, but none in June or July when school was out. About 3 months ago, I noted that they had scheduled the Hubble mission (STS-125) right over top of STS – 127 in May. This seemed odd to me as it’s impossible to launch two shuttles at the same time. I decided it must mean they were going to delay one of the two missions into the summer gap. I found out the double schedule was because the Hubble mission was not for sure yet. NASA didn’t want to commit to it in case the Hubble broke down again (as it did last year right before they had tried to launch this mission). If that happened, then the Hubble mission was off, and STS-127 would be in May and there would potentially be no summer launch for me to go see. If the Hubble mission did go ahead, the STS-127 mission would delay to June 13^th.

Perfect, right in the middle of the summer. Now I had my potential date, but nothing is for sure with NASA. Dad and I made several plans, but couldn’t solidify any of them until the Hubble mission actually launched and we could be fairly sure that STS-127 would be in June.

On Monday I watched with great excitement the launch of STS-125, the Hubble mission. I was happy, not only because I like watching shuttle launches, but because this began to pave the way for me to view the June 13^th launch. On another front, I had been watching Allegiant Air’s ticket prices from Cedar Rapids to Orlando for the June 11^th flight. They had been as high as $149 per person per way and had been steadily coming down as the 30 day mark came closer. I had watched the site enough to know that they usually went to $69 per person per day about 30 days out and that was about as good as you were going to get.

Sure enough, last week they went to $69. But the launch hadn’t happened yet, I didn’t want to order my tickets and then have the Hubble mission get delayed. So this week, after we had a successful Hubble mission launch, I ordered my tickets and Dad reserved the resort. I reserved a car the next day which only left the actual tickets for viewing the launch left to buy.

I happened to go to the site that was selling the tickets on Tuesday, the day after the Hubble mission launched. Now I had been to the site before, but it had always be advertising tickets for the Hubble mission, and they don’t sell tickets for any other mission except the one that’s coming up next. Tuesday they finally updated their site to get ready for the STS-127 ticket sale event. It is, in fact, an event similar to buying tickets to see a really really good movie that has been anticipated for about 5 years. The reason being is that they only sell about 2000 tickets per launch. “Two thousand, that sounds like a lot” you say. I thought that too, until I read some people’s stories online about trying to buy tickets and having them sell out within minutes – MINUTES – of going on sale. Also, people warned that you have to get ALL THE WAY through the purchase process and get a confirmation email before you’re guaranteed to have your tickets. In other words, clicking buy doesn’t reserve the tickets for you. Clicking confirm at the end of the purchase form does. So you have to get all the way through the form before everyone else does in order to get your tickets.

The message on the site Tuesday said “Tickets will go on sale on Wednesday at 9:00 AM EST.” I figured the whole “selling out in minutes” was probably an exaggeration, but I wasn’t going to take that chance. I got in to work at my usual 7:15 this morning and first thing set an alarm for 7:55. I wrote out all my information into a notepad document and double checked it all so that I could just copy and paste the fields into the order form when it became available. I went to the website and hit refresh a couple of times. I got the “Tickets will go on sale at 9:00 AM EST” message again so I knew I had to wait.

7:55 came and my alarm went off.

I pulled up an online clock of Greenwich mean time adjusted to central standard time so I would know exactly when it went to 8:00AM (9:00 EST). I hit refresh every minute and got the same “Tickets will go on sale at 9:00 AM EST” message. At 7:59 I started hitting refresh every 20 seconds, just in case they let us in early.

“Tickets will go on sale at 9:00 AM EST”

At 7:59:50 I hit refresh every second.

“Tickets will go on sale at 9:00 AM EST”

I remembered what people had said about being part of the way through buying their tickets and having them sell out. My hands began to shake as I held the mouse.

I hit refresh at 8:00 AM – the page changed. The message now said “Buy Now!” I selected the ticket I wanted and the purchase form came up.

Now my hands were really shaking. I realized in my haste to have everything ready, I had totally forgotten to type my address out beforehand. Quickly I typed and double checked my address. I copy and pasted my credit card information and selected 2 tickets (one for me, and one for Laura).

I hit submit.

I looked at the clock – it was 8:03AM

I waited for two seconds.

Then, the confirmation page came up. I checked my email, and sure enough, I was confirmed two tickets had been purchased. I double checked everything again just to make sure I hadn’t made a mistake in my haste but everything looked good.

Phew well I guess those people saying everything sells out in two minutes were exaggerating right?

I went back to the main page and hit refresh again – the page now read SOLD OUT

It was 8:04AM