By Chip Rice
for the News-Tribune

TITUSVILLE, Fla. — Have you ever been so obsessed with something that you'll go to any means possible to get it accomplished? 
Astronomy and spaceflight have been my passions for as long as I can remember. Only recently have I undertaken the wallet-risky procedure of traveling to Florida for rocket launches.
It may surprise many to know just how far a fanatic like me will go to witness the awe-inspiring sight of a space shuttle rising from its pad.
Over the past five years,  I have traveled to Cape Canaveral to see three shuttle launches, the Mars Opportunity lander launch, and the Mercury Messenger launch. 
For the most part, I enjoyed these spectacular sights from a motel room balcony or a mosquito infested swamp 10 or 12 miles from the launch pad. As a child watching space shots on television, however, I knew that the place to be was in front of  “the clock” — a word that has come to have a say-no-more meaning to anybody who knows me.
The clock is that over-sized, iconic, rectangular timepiece that sits on the lawn in front of the press site bleachers at Kennedy Space Center near Titusville, Florida. It has been seen in the foreground of most manned launches on TV since the days of Apollo. It is situated just three miles from the fiery thunder of  launch pad 39A when the space shuttle orbiters depart on their frequent journeys to space. I have always wondered what a dream it would be to see a launch from that famous clock and feel the unleashing of enough energy and shock waves to knock the air right out of my lungs.
Unfortunately, only NASA employees, the press, and friends and family of the astronauts ever get that close to the amazing spectacle of a space shuttle launch. It seemed not even personalized gifts from a family business given to the shuttle crew of an earlier mission could snag me an invite. So how would I ever fulfill my dream?It dawned on me that I had written stories for college literary journals, this newspaper and even a national magazine in the past. Perhaps I could be “press” as well. When I told News-Tribune editor Liz Beavers that I would document my launch experience and write an article about it, she was gracious enough to verify me as a correspondent to the media office at NASA.  It seemed all was set for me to fulfill a life-long dream.
However, anyone who even casually followed space shuttle Endeavour's last mission to the International Space Station knows timing was not on my side. 
Having just bought a new home, I wanted to make this trip a quick, one-time, financially painless deal. I thought a plane trip with the nation's travel down a bit would be just the means to do this. However, it became apparent that I could probably soon take stock out in one of the airlines. A dream that was supposed to have been realized in a few days actually took near 30.
For a spaceflight enthusiast, paradoxically, I am not a happy plane passenger. Usually a nervous wreck and white-knuckled all the way, I am nearly at the point of  a panic attack during any airline venture. Twenty-hour car trips were the means of travel to the cape previously for me, but for the opportunity to watch a launch from “the clock,” I'd endure anything!
Round-trip airline flight No. 1 ended with a  gentle landing in the  early morning Florida sunshine. On this first five- day pilgrimage, I saved the last two dates for  launch attempts...or delays as it turned out.
The crew of space shuttle Endeavour on mission STS-127 was to lift off at around 7 a.m., near dawn at the cape on June 13. In an attempt to dodge any long-lined spectator traffic, we shoved off in our rental car toward the Kennedy Space Center press site at 3 a.m. in the humid subtropical darkness. As I stared at that glittering launch pad lit up with search lights, I felt as though it all was a dream until something rousted me from my semiconsciousness. My beloved countdown clock, there on the lawn standing guard like a sentry, was ticking forward instead of backward. “This could not be good!,” I winced.
After goading information from one representative of the sea of press reporters returning to their vehicles, I, disheartened, came to understand that the huge orange external fuel tank attached to the shuttle was leaking explosive liquid hydrogen around a seal. The launch would be rescheduled, as it turned out, for later in the week.
My friend and story photographer Clint Hillman and I had already been in Florida for five days and I needed to return to my job as director of music at Keyser Presbyterian Church and he to his private business. The reporter at the cape had told us the very same problem had happened on a recent earlier mission, so they would know how to fix it quickly.
That's when my collegue and I came up with a radical idea. Fly home to West Virginia, wait a few days, then take a midnight flight back to Florida on the morning of the launch, which was rescheduled at 5 a.m. Then we'd quickly drive over to the cape and witness what would now be the magnificent sight of a shuttle night launch - another dream of mine. We would immediately drive back to the airport, climb aboard a return flight and be home in Keyser within 24 hours, safe and somewhat financially sound.
After landing on round-trip flight No. 2, we rented a mini-van and dashed to Kennedy Space Center, an hour away. The guards there were beginning to know us by sight. Standing beside the Vehicle Assembly Building, the monstrosity where the shuttles and boosters are assembled for flight, we had a conversation with one of the friendliest of guards who described what the incredible night launch would look like.
“Like a false dawn,” she said.
“Of course, you know its leaking hydrogen again,” she threw out!
I felt as though the giant crawler transporter that carries the shuttle to the pad had flattened me with one of its treaded wheels.     The ride back to the airport was immediate  and I had gotten the definite idea that the good Lord did not want me to see a shuttle launch from “the clock.”
I was home in 24 hours perhaps, but now anything but financially sound and not exactly safe either as a late afternoon thunderstorm made for a rather harsh landing at Dulles. My heart and wallet had lost its immediate desire for any more launch attempts for this mission, or so I thought.
The next attempt at STS-127 wouldn’t be for almost a month. Pondering finances, I justified intent with such inane analogies as “a mechanic in a greasy coverall rarely falls to pieces if he accidentally brushes up against wet paint.”
Rationalizing further, I decided that on my first two trips I had been so worried about the launch that I didn’t enjoy myself.
“This time I will treat it like a true do-nothing retreat,” I reasoned. 
July 10, 2009-Round- trip flight No. 3: Landing in yet another thunderstorm, we received word before even claiming our luggage that lightning had hit the launch pad and would delay the first launch attempt in a month by a day. Now was the time to visit Gator World! Perhaps a side-trip to Miami or Tampa would manifest itself. It never did.
We arrived at the space center around 4 p.m. each afternoon thereafter for the better part of a week. Beside the launch control center, we'd watch the van with the seven astronauts pass by parade- style on their way to the shuttle each day. We'd then retire to the NASA cafeteria where we would spend the afternoon cooling ourselves from the grueling scrub-swamp heat and watch the ominous afternoon thunder heads approach to thwart each day’s launch attempt. In that commissary, we rubbed elbows with NASA  technicians and back-up astronauts.
I felt closer to the space program now than I ever had in my youth. A dream had been fulfilled launch or no launch.
Finally, on the third afternoon of the third trip,   a month and two days after the intended launch date, a sea breeze installed itself from off the Atlantic and kept the thunderheads far to the west. I still would never have believed that it was a go if I hadn’t heard the voice of  Fox News reporter Phil Keat-ing beside me. We sort of  camped out next to his
news tent for most of the month. Eavesdropping on his report, we heard him chime, "Looks like today is the day!" 
As my beloved clock crept down to T-0, a sweat developed on my upper lip. I was nervous! How loud would it be at this distance? During earlier launches, the 10 mile separation kept the sound from arriving to us for several long seconds. What would happen at a mere three miles?
Mercifully, I was to find out at 6:03 p.m. on Wednesday, July 15, 2009. The familiar white steam belched from either side of the tantalizingly close launch pad 39A. Quite rapidly the orange, Tylenol-shaped tank rose from behind the tower and revealed the proud white Endeavor clamped to its side. Television and photographs are deceiving as the flame beneath the solid rocket boosters is so bright, you generally need to shield your eyes from it as if from the sun. Then the sound arrived, something akin to placing your ears next to the muffler pipes of a Harley at full throttle.
STS-127 climbed proudly heavenward on a long puffy white trail directly overhead rattling my chest and the press bleachers on which I stood, then arched north-eastward until it was just a barely discernible point of light in the blue.
By the time we had packed up our cameras and got to the car, the shuttle's main engines had shut down and the astronauts were falling back toward earth, a fate they would never meet since by this time they were traveling at 17,500 miles per hour. This is so fast that the earth kept curving down and away from them before they could ever hit the ground, a little phenomenon known as orbit.
On my final flight home, I wasn’t so sure that I wouldn’t hit the ground, however. The plane shook violently yet again on our decent into Washington. Green-faced, I exited the plane. Walking past the pilot, I noticed he was talking to a mechanic who had just boarded.
“Now just when did the sound start?” the mechanic inquired. What an unbelievable endeavor to witness the launch of Endeavour!
With so many trials to endure to see a rocket launch and with so many problems here on earth, thousands ask why anyone would ever be that fanatic over the space program.
Few realize that we can’t afford not to be.
Ponder the following examples: the CCD chip that images breast tumors with more resolution than ever before possible, eliminating the need for more expensive biopsies - a result of NASA research.
A special light therapy used to treat children’s brain cancer stemming from micro-gravity plant experiments aboard the space shuttle - a result of NASA research.
Better molds for artificial limbs made from the same orange foam insulation on space shuttle external tanks - a result of NASA research. Ever used Vel-cro? A microwave? You guessed it; there are over 100 documented house-hold technologies alone stemming from the space program. So if a loved one has been diagnosed with a dangerous disease, chances are they have a better prognosis because of  spaceflight research.
Now with my dream realized, I may take a brief respite from live launches. But with the return to the moon coming in the next decade, I’ll be there at Complex 39 again, heart pounding, cheering loudly for our astronauts as I sit staring excitedly heavenward from “the clock!”