An Atlas

At first glance, this might seem like it does not belong in this blog. It does however. This is a picture of much of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. From right to left there is a big building that is important for something, I am just not sure what, then there are four masts things with white bits on top. Those surround launch pad 40. The white bits at the top of the masts are the lightning rod type things which try to attract lightning away from a rocket if one is sitting on the pad. Next are the two tall buildings, each used for vertical assembly of the rockets. To the far left there is another tall building, I think used for keeping rockets in while launch conditions are unfavorable, and finally there is launch pad 41.

At first glance it is much the same as launch pad 40, but this one has a rocket on it. If you click on the picture it gets bigger, so you can see it a little better. At this point it was about 8.3km away from where I was taking the picture. The rocket in the picture is and Atlas 5. The payload it was carrying was the MUOS 1 satellite of the US Navy. It was supposed to launch the day after I took this photo, but the launch ended up being scrubbed a few times for weather, and ended up lifting off about a week and a half later.

I think rockets are really cool, and it was amazing to actually see a real one sitting on the launch pad. Watching the launch online later was even cooler because I had actually seen the exact rocket that was blasting itself into space.