News & Updates

How to Watch Artemis I

posted on 12th August, 2022 12:00 pm by

We’re just over two weeks out from Artemis I, and I finally remembered how to get into the WordPress for the site.
I’ve been responding to the email inquiries, I just couldn’t get in to make the actual post.

So, let’s get down to brass tacks. It’s all but certain that this launch is going to draw attendance on a scale comparable or possibly greater than Falcon Heavy, DM-2, or the last Shuttle. Early projections expect at least 100,000 people to travel here for the launch (space.com).
The KSC Visitors Complex has already sold out of at least one of their viewing packages, if not more.
No doubt hotels are already booked to full and then some, and even assuming they aren’t, that’s not going to last much longer. Hotels, Motels, AirBnBs, the swath of vacation rentals in Cocoa Beach, people negotiating stays with their local friends. So, what’re the ways you can take part, how can you watch the Artemis I launch?

(Prefer Twitter to blog posts? Click here for a twitter thread of this article!)

Option 1: Stay home.

But Lupi, you’re writing a blog to guide tourists in their quest to witness a rocket launch, and this is quite possibly one of the most notable rocket launches of the coming decade and beyond!

Yep. And we’re in year 2 of a pandemic that’s still ongoing, despite everyone’s best attempts to plug fingers in their ears and pretend we beat it. And we’re at the start of a second one, that we’re also pretending won’t be a problem and trying to Blame It On The Gays like it’s the damn Reagan administration.

Editorializing aside, there’s just the plain truth that there’s only so much space here, so many hotels, so many parks, so much length of beach, so many places I could send people, and they’re all going to be full to brimming regardless of what I write here, shoulder to shoulder, cramming in.
Additionally, there’s going to be ample coverage taking place online, and probably also on television. Whether you tune into the likes of NASA’s official webcast, or the wealth of independent enthusiast media like Everyday Astronaut, NASASpaceflight, and so many more, you’re bound to see a whole lot of the launch that we won’t be able to see in the moment, the video feeds and so on.
This may be the first Artemis launch, but with any luck, it won’t be the last. There will be opportunities yet, and maybe we’ll be able to embrace them without the looming threat of two wretched diseases poised to spread through onlooking crowds.

Option 2: You’re Coming Here Anyway

I know I’m not going to change many minds with option 1, but it needed to be said regardless. So what’re your local options? How can you view the launch from here?

To start with, Florida Today has put together this comprehensive guide on where to look for hotels if you haven’t already booked.

The Kennedy Space Center Visitors’ Complex has already sold out of their Feel the Heat viewing packages ($249), and their Feel the Fun viewing packages ($149), but still appears (as of the 12th) to have tickets available for Main Center Viewing ($99).
As of August 17th, the KSC has sold out of all viewing packages.
This isn’t in a specific site like the previous 2 packages, which bring you to the Banana River Viewing Area and the Atlantis North Lawn respectively, but they’ll have several large screens spread throughout the park (Atlantis South Lot, Rocket Garden, and Parking Lot 3). You won’t have a view of the rocket from the ground, but you’ll see it quickly enough once it lights the engines.
These options come with assorted souvenirs, onsite commentary, and amenities like dining and bathrooms available, as well as a ticket to come back to the park within 30 days of the launch and enjoy all it has to offer on a more normal operating day. It also comes with limitations, as outlined in their Launch Scrub Policy

Jetty Park will likely be available, as it’s within their operating hours. The gates generally open at 7am, but Artemis may be an exceptional circumstance.
As of August 18th, the Canaveral Port Authority has outlined its plan for Artemis I in a recent meeting. Jetty Park will open at 5am and close when it reaches capacity.
You will need to purchase a day pass ahead of time($16), which you can do on their website. Additionally, if you’re bringing an RV or not averse to camping, you may be able to book a campsite or cabin for the night prior, if they haven’t been fully booked already(see here for pricing).

Also of note from that recent meeting, Port Canaveral will not be allowing parking or viewing from the Freddie Patrick Park Boat Ramp, which I wouldn’t recommend in the first place (hence it not being on the map), that parking area will be for boat launching only.

The Observation Deck atop Beachwave Beachwear in downtown Titusville will NOT be available, they were not able to make it work.

Playalinda Beach will NOT be available, the minimum safe distance from the pad is at least 3 miles, and it’s only a mile away. The National Seashore has published their notice of this closure here (Image leads to their webpage):

Brevard County’s myriad parks will be open as always, but all have limited parking, not all offer bathrooms, and space will be limited. These parks are largely all documented on our Viewing Area Map, and have fairly comparable views of the pad, but if you’re seeking a specific recommendation/advice on the view from a particular park, feel free to contact me via email, twitter, whatever. It’s all in the sidebar over there.
NOTE: if trying to stake out sites on other mapping apps, KARS Park is NOT a public park, it’s for the use of badged NASA/USSF/Contractors only, and they will likely turn you away if you try to watch from there.

The city of Titusville has announced that the Max Brewer Bridge will be closed to vehicle traffic for an hour after the launch, and the announcement suggests that they may plan on closing it before and during the launch as well. You may be able to park at one of the nearby parks and use the full deck of the bridge for viewing, not just the guarded sidewalks.

Beach access from Cape Canaveral down through Cocoa Beach and points south is available, though again limited by parking, and lacking a ground view of the rocket. The same warnings about parking apply here, but doubly so because those are private residences.
The Cocoa Beach Pier may offer viewing from the pier itself, as well as paid parking to watch from the beach.

Star*Fleet Tours will be offering both launch cruises($95) and pre-launch photo tours($120). The launch cruises will anchor at the southern extent of the Marine Hazard Area, as close as a boat can get to the rocket. I may even end up offering to volunteer with them again, if they need an extra hand with check-ins or another guide for the boats.
As of August 21st, Star*Fleet has sold out of Launch Day tickets. Some pre-launch pad tours may still have tickets for sale, call them for availability.

What you need to know if you’re traveling here:

Get to your location of choice EARLY. Like, as early as you can manage. 3 hours or more, if you want to be sure. Yeah, that’s going to be like 4, 5am but better to be there and chill in your car for a bit/stake out your spot than miss out on parking/space. KSC will give you instructions on when to arrive with your purchased ticket, but it may be wise to set out early for that as well. Not quite as early, but nonetheless.

Wear a mask, even outdoors, if your viewing area is so packed that you cannot social distance. Be careful about bumping into others, as monkeypox spreads like chickenpox/smallpox/the other poxviruses, through physical contact. You’re likely to find yourself in a crowd wherever you watch from, and that’s just asking for one or both pandemics to tear through it. Be a launch rat, not a plague rat.

Pack water, bug spray, snacks, heck maybe even pack lunch. This launch is taking place in the early morning, and you’ll be camping out for it in the earlier morning. Those bugs will not take mercy on you. Additionally, it may be wise to bring towels, chairs, et cetera. Pack a cooler, you’re going to be in your spot for a while.

Binoculars are fun if you have them. Don’t bother with a camera, especially not on your first launch. Don’t watch your first launch through a lens, enjoy it to the fullest. There’s no shortage of photographers who will sell you brilliant shots after, as keepsakes.

This is going to be LOUD. If you or people you know have auditory issues, it may be prudent to pack earplugs or earmuffs, but you’re going to feel this in your chest, it’s going to shake the air. The Falcon 9 that went off a few days ago rattled my house just a little, this is going to be an order of magnitude louder.

Do not attempt to park on private property, you will be towed (especially true of Titusville Towers). Some businesses will be offering their lots for paid parking, the Wells Fargo by Space View Park does so often for large launches.

Do not expect to get back to your lodging in any sort of timely manner. Honestly, just camp out in your spot for a few hours after, or stay local, get lunch out somewhere. Traffic out is going to be a nightmare. For Falcon Heavy, I watched from Port Canaveral and it took from the 3:45 launch until after sunset for us to get back to our hotel in Cocoa Beach, only something like 5 miles away. Let the crowds thin out, rather than bang your head against the wheel in gridlock for hours. The tweet below shows how traffic will be directed out of the Titusville area after the launch, for planning purposes. The original alert from the City of Titusville is available here, as well.

Sorry, I had to hack this together using a table and couldn’t figure out how to turn off borders

Final Notes

Seriously, please don’t come. You’re likely to either get yourself sick, or get someone else sick, because pandemics are insidious things and this is just asking for trouble.
If you’re going to come anyway, please stay safe and be courteous to those around you by masking up and doing the right thing.
The list of viewing sites in this article, and on this website in general, is not fully comprehensive, but contains only vetted areas. If it’s not on this list, I can’t promise it’ll be available for viewing. I put out a call for any riverfront businesses that may be offering viewing from their premises to reach out, and I’d list them here, but none have done so at this point. I will update this article if that changes.

As a personal note, my world has been a living hell for the past while since Wayward passed away. I spent the intervening 8 months trying to land a job, bleeding every last cent I had to spare, and then that job fired me after 3 months, days after I returned from a trip to see my dying mother, that ended up with me having to lay her to rest. They fired me 3 days after her funeral, 2 days after I’d gotten back here. I barely had the chance to make a dent in paying off the debt I was in from that job hunt, and now I’m back at the end of that financial rope.
If you’re willing to support my work here, now would be a wonderful time, or Artemis I may be the end of the line for LaunchRats. To do so, you can purchase my photography, throw a tip in the jar directly, or subscribe to my patreon, whatever you so wish.

Safe Travels (even if I wish you wouldn’t),
Lupi

Edit history:
17/August: Added traffic diagrams courtesy of Tom McCool, and updated KSC viewing package availability
17/August (again): Updated Star*Fleet availability
18/August: Jetty Park update and inclusion of Florida Today’s hotels guide
18/August (again): Updated Star*Fleet availability (again)
19/August: Official statement from the Canaveral National Seashore on Playalinda’s closure
20/August: Linked to twitter version of article, minor rearranging for parity with said thread, added potential of bridge viewing.
21/August: Added full-county traffic flow plan. Sorry it’s a table
21/August (again): Updated Star*Fleet availability (again)
26/August: Observation Deck.

News & Updates

Crew-3 and Other News

posted on 28th October, 2021 12:00 pm by

One post a month isn’t many to make, but with launches as infrequent as they are, it’s not like there’s much to talk about otherwise! I had planned on making a post for Lucy, but for reasons I’ll get into later, I elected not to do so.

As far as Crew-3 is concerned, I’ve been posting updates on Twitter as options present themselves. Thus far, I’ve only seen few available options.

UPDATE 1:00 PM EDT 3-Nov-21: The launch has delayed to a new date and time of 11:36 PM EDT on 6 November from its original timeslot of 2:21 AM EDT on 31 October,

– First and foremost, the Kennedy Space Center Visitors’ Complex is offering paid viewing, which includes admission, food, swag, and such in addition to the general experience they offer. At this point, their Feel the Heat package ($250), which offers views clear across the water to the launchpad from the Banana River Viewing site, may be sold out, but their Feel the Fun package remains if you’re content with viewing from the main visitors’ center. It retails for $150, with all the inclusions listed.

– Star*Fleet Tours is offering paid viewing as well, and tickets should have gone up for sale by the time this post goes live at noon on the 28th. They offer views from boats chartered to sail out into the Atlantic and sit near the edge of the keep-out zone, offering a unique launch view! In addition to the viewing itself, they offer a pre-launch cruise to see the rocket up close on the pad, sailing right along the shore and offering photo opportunities. If all goes well, I’ll be lending them a hand on these cruises, so, feel free to say hi!

– This is where we get to the difficult part. Night launches are a bit of a challenge, as most viewing sites I’d recommend are public parks along US1. These parks are only open dawn to dusk, according to Brevard County Parks and Recreation, and therefore not open for night launch viewing. Ahead of Lucy, I reached out to the Parks department with an email, hoping to get clarification on whether launch nights were considered an exception, but I have yet to hear back, and that’s why no Lucy post was ever made. Between the lack of paid options, and the lack of info from the Parks department, I had nothing to post.

– The only park I could get clarification on was Space View Park, operated by the City of Titusville rather than by Brevard County. Space View Park is open for launch viewing, provided you can find street parking. They do not want you parking in private parking for businesses, and those businesses can and will have you towed, as is their right. I was downtown for a farmer’s market, and someone had parked in Titusville Towers and either gotten towed, or came real close to being such. Fortunately, Titusville has a decent amount of street parking, so assuming you get there early enough, you should be fine. It’s a lovely view on a nice seawall, and folk like Ozzie Osband (responsible for the campaign to get our local area code set to 321) offer commentary and live updates, hosting from the park.

Now, as far as the site goes, not much has changed. The most notable thing is that I tried to get the email for the Twitter account changed to our team@launchrats.com address from Wayward’s personal, but it turns out Wayward had used it for a second account, @LaunchRatsNet, which got suspended for being inauthentic because it never did anything after being created. So I just changed the email to lupi@launchrats.com instead, and gave up there.

I hope to get some help untangling the mess of accounts, domains, hosting, and inboxes that Wayward left behind to streamline everything, but at least I’m getting the hang of fumbling my way through the little stuff. Every little bit is progress, even if I’m learning to hate this WordPress editor.

Once I get everything on the back end straightened out, I’d love to reach out to local businesses about advertising, there’s a ton of places I’d happily endorse and it’d be nice to make the site self-sustaining in the process. If you’re a local business (Titusville, Cocoa Beach, and City of Cape Canaveral area) and you’re seeing this post, I’d welcome your email @ team@launchrats.com!

Happy launching,
Lupi

News & Updates

An Uninspiring Update

posted on 9th September, 2021 1:57 pm by

LaunchRats After Wayward, and Inspiration4 viewing advice.

I think this is my first actual posting to the site, because the only other thing on here that’s mine, was sent as a Google Doc (to bennu and back, happy 5th anniversary OSIRIS-REx).

I’m trying to pick up all the pieces that Wayward left behind. I’ve been cleaning and rearranging the house, went through and donated a lot of their stuff, and I’ve tried here and there to poke at this site, without knowing much at all about how websites work.

A few weeks ago I updated the sidebar, which I have no clue how I did. But I’m writing this post to say first and foremost that I finally figured out how to update the contact form. Up until this point, all submissions on the Contact Us page were being sent directly to Wayward’s inbox, which meant I had to boot up their old computer to check for them.

I’m happy to report those now point towards the Team email which means they should be accessible to me, and any future folk who join me here. In the meantime, I’m sorry that I missed a handful of inquiries, though it seemed like a lot of the form submissions were just spam.

So, let’s talk Inspiration4.

I won’t mince words, Florida is a COVID cesspit right now, DO NOT TRAVEL HERE FROM OUT OF STATE. No launch is worth it, not even this one. Even if you’re traveling within the state, be careful. I don’t recall how much of a hotspot Brevard County is, but I’m sure it’s no different from the rest of Florida.

This launch has a Netflix deal. It should be no trouble watching it from home, with far better coverage than most launches get these days. It has John Kraus covering it for photography, it has the local space media being all but frozen out of coverage in favor of major media outlet exclusives like said Netflix deal.

For better or worse, you’ll probably have a better time watching from home. They’re saying this has a 24 hour window? The longest window I can remember was the Falcon Heavy Demo Flight in 2018, and that was only from something like 10am to 4pm. It used that entire window, launching at 3:45 PM that day. And let me tell you, it was a great day, but not a great time. By the end of it, my traveling companions were lobsters from not using sunscreen, and I still got burnt even though I was.

Your options are the $250 Feel the Heat package from the Kennedy Space Center, but I don’t know how that works with a 24 hour window, are they gonna keep people there for the whole attempt, or, what?

Given half of the launch window is during the night, Playalinda Beach is already likely to be off the table. But even so, we don’t know whether they’ll open it at all during the day, they have recently been closing it for launches from 39A.

So for the most part, the options are the same as always, in that they’re “pick a park along US1 and see if it’s open/full.”

If you do visit, please wear your mask and be courteous to those around you with social distancing. I don’t imagine we’ll be getting Falcon Heavy crowds, considering the Feel the Heat package doesn’t even appear to be sold out with less than a week to launch.

Take care,
Lupi.

News & Updates

ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

posted on 12th April, 2021 11:46 am by

Hey, y’all.

Starting… uh, a couple weeks ago, Launch Rats is in the process of transitioning to new-ish ownership, becoming the sole dominion of Lupi alone.

The reason why: is here, and also here.

During this transition period, responses to personalized launch viewing info requests may be delayed or missed entirely. Sorry about that; we’ll do the best we can. Also, updates will be suspended until… whenever. I reckon there’s enough other info on this site to remain useful to y’all in the meantime.

Clear skies & safe landings,

Wayward

News & Updates

starlink, starlink… something about starlink…

posted on 2nd February, 2021 5:10 pm by

Two of ’em, in fact. Which are, right now, both scheduled for Thursday, February 4th: one from SLC-40 at 1:19 am local time (GMT-5) and one from LC-39A at 5:36 am.

I mean, okay, first of all, that is almost definitely NOT going to happen, one or the other of these launches is going to move. But also, both of those times can only get earlier, and that means that neither launch will be viewable from Playalinda Beach, which is favored for Starlink LC-39A launches. Alternatives include Parrish Park, the Max Brewer Bridge, anywhere along US-1 in Titusville, the beaches of Cape Canaveral and Cocoa Beach, y’know, the usual suspects…

…but also, it’s been cold lately. Like, not just Florida cold, but COLD, and any launch viewing area is going to be by the water and thus even colder… For that reason, our recommendation for this launch is, wherever you’re going to view it from, prioritize a place where you can stay cozy in your car (so, not the Max Brewer Bridge) and honestly, if you’re not local, come see a different launch, ‘cuz neither of these is going to be comfortable.

Keep an eye on Space Twitter for the most timely updates on launch schedules; we’ll add more info here as we can.

News & Updates

oh right, stuff’s (still) launching, whoops

posted on 16th January, 2021 6:19 pm by

Yes, I’m lazy. Yes, I’m gonna keep editing this post for as long as I can keep reusing the same two basic paragraphs. 😉

The last Starlink launch went up as planned (yay!) but now we’re hearing that Wednesday, January 27th, is another SpaceX Starlink launching from LC-39A. Hazard maps have safety zones active from 7:33 am to 8:54 am, so… somewhere in that range? Still waiting on more definite info, but for this launch, the best viewing location is still Playalinda Beach, due to its proximity to the pad. Get there early, bring water and bug spray and probably warm clothes; it’s been Florida-chilly lately.

SpaceX Transporter 1 launched like a bazillion cubesats from SLC-40 this morning, and now we’re waiting for JRTI to come back to port with the 8x flown booster – amusingly, it was held up by the hazard zones for the Transporter launch. Sources say it’ll be this afternoon or evening.

As always, keep an eye on social media in case of launch delays, and to get info on returning drone ships after the launch. Cheers!

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Upcoming Space Coast Launches

Falcon Heavy on pad LC-39A the day before its historic debut, poised for flight. Photo by Lupi.

Falcon Heavy on pad LC-39A the day before its historic debut, poised for flight. Photo by Lupi.

At this time, we recommend that you consult the following resource for the most up-to-date launch information available: