Good afternoon, this is The Smoke Eater for Monday, Nov. 21, 2022, and I'm a spaceman.
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ABOVE THE FOLD
Kennedy Space Center is tucked away on Merritt Island, over on the far east site of central Florida. Most people will only ever see the Visitor Center, or get a whistle stop bus tour of the various complexes and their massive hangers.
It's an awe inspiring sprawl that shows the capabilities of human ingenuity and determination. A symbol of our refusal to accept the terms of our bargain with the universe for existence: our species' extinction.
Naturally, the tech billionaires hoping to fuck off from Earth before they can turn into some post-apocalyptic ecological hellscape have similarly begun colonizing this US tax-payer owned island with their own giant workshops, security, and staff. Their ill-conceived libertarian fever-dream already has the elements of a space-faring cyberpunk dystopia that would make Issac Asimov weep uncontrollably, and give Ray Bradberry nightmares.
Because they can afford to.
And, they'd be quick to remind you, that this story would not be possible were it not for their sizeable investments into the colossal boondoggle of finance and logistics known as, "the space program."
Congress sure as hell doesn't want to fund humanity's only insurance policy, unless the polls tick up. The average tax payer can't even understand the vast possibilities of a space-faring civilization, if they even care. And Wall Street's suit and tie crowd have never seen any short-term profit on the event horizon, and they never will.
So we sit, and we wait. We fly around on our dirty, little blue ball at break neck speeds, waiting for the universe to punch our ticket with another big rock, or some other mind-bending anomaly that decides to cross our flight path.
Inhale. Exhale.
The only proof I had to keep from getting my skull thumped by some former college linebacker collecting pay checks for shooing away drunk Florida men was an email from the press office of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). All it said was there was an opening to photograph the Artemis One launch, and my request for a media credential had been approved. It asked that I confirm my attendance.
The email arrived during a week before the appallingly savage beating Florida’s Democratic party took during the midterm elections.
My reply was short, sent from the field office in the back of my truck:
"I WILL be attending the launch," I wrote.
And that's it. There was never any further correspondence.
So on the day of the launch I didn't have a goddamn clue where the hell I was supposed to go. And if there's one thing you learn in the professional media business when covering a government shindig, it's their fondness for the ritualistic bureaucratic enema.
I arrived 12 hours before the launch and started at the Visitor Center. The assumption was logical: there's always an information station at a visitor's center, surely there would be an authority figure capable of pointing me in the right direction.
This was wrong.
The parking attendant at the gate shrugged when I explained that I was there to photograph the launch, flashing a press card.
"Works for me,” he said cheerfully. "Park over in four, by the buses. Then check out the Visitor Center."
In function, the KSC Visitor Center is a living museum, but in form, it looks more like an cheap, government-funded amusement park. Giant rocket replicas stand tall and proud, waiting for tourists to take shitty low-angle selfies. For better or worse, I didn't have time to soak in the edu-tainment, or find a quiet place to smoke and scribble notes weighing the pros and cons of spending federal tax dollars on weird bullshit for tourists. In Floridia.
A staffer milling about the entrance sent me to a clerk at the Information Center. The clerk inside sent me to their manager. And the manager simply told me they were all contractors, not NASA employees, and they didn't have a clue what to do with me. As government contractors, they were kept largely out of the loop from NASA's business.
"Is there anyone else I could talk to," I asked. "Someone on the NASA side?"
"I honestly don't know," the manager said. "You could try the badging office."
"What's that, where is that," I asked racing over toward a register in the little gift shop area, pushing aside two German tourists to point at the cartoonish plastic map taped to the counter.
"No, no," the manager said. "I mean -- you can talk to them about getting credentialed, but..."
"OK, where is it?"
The manager reeled back at my years of experience in retail sales and government bureaucracy: I was polite and upbeat, inquisitive and empathetic, and I was not fucking around.
The manager sighed. "So, this is just a map of the Visitor Center," the manager said with exasperation. The manger reached into a drawer and pulled out a paper map of the entire KSC complex and a green highlighter.
"We're here," the manager said, highlighting a winding route. "Think you can find it?"
"Yep," I said. "I got a compass."
After finding the Badging Office, a clerk explained that they only run the credentials for authorized government workers and contractors at KSC. They’re responsible for federal-issued hard passes, not media credentials.
"You're not in my system," the clerk said. "Why are you even here?"
Upon explaining the bureaucratic black comedy of my life, the clerk chuckled and shook their heard.
"If you're press and here for the launch, the Media Center should have sent you instructions," the clerk said. "You'll need to head over to that building and speak to them."
"Can you show me," I asked unfolding the paper map.
The clerk smiled and circled the Media Center building then scribbled another winding route to the on the south edge of the complex, several miles away.
"So, head out to the road,” I said clicking the compass on my watch and gesturing with my hand. “…And head that way?"
"You got it," the clerk said.
When I finally found the the Media Center the door was locked and the lights were off.
After sending two condescending posts on social media and leaving a rather terse and precise voicemail, I trudged back to my truck and plopped a flattened cigarette in my mouth.
The fact that the the Media Center sits opposite a liquid fuel plant gave me a momentary pause as I went to flip open my lighter.
"They're not back until five, mate," a man with an Australian accent said. "Something about a late shift coming in for the launch. They closed at noon."
"Well, shit," I told him. "Looks like I got a couple hours to kill. Wonder if there's a pub around here."
He told me to head south, that the town between KSC and the Space Force base at the other end of the island had a bunch of chain restaurants.
"There isn't too much, but there's a little pub over by the Target," he said. "I was there just last night."
"Well," I said, "That's better than 'no.'"
"Right!"
"Any good?"
"Which?"
"The pub."
"Oh, God no, mate" he said with a hearty laugh. "I can't recommend it!"
The sun was setting by the time I finally got my credential and found my way over to the media viewing area. The rocket sat on the launchpad about two miles away.
The smell of DEET filled the little parking lot opposite the famous Countdown Clock. Documentary crews hauled around boom mics and LED tube lights. A college student stood set up a camera in the bed of a pick-up. An RV with a long, white trailer and a telescope idled.
Dozens of frumpish, bearded dorks in cargo shorts, Tommy Bahama shirts and fishing vests milled about. Those that weren’t actively engaged in some socially awkward conversation were busy fiddling with expensive gadgets and gizmos.
A broadcast blonde in a tight dress was clopping back to an ENG van in six inch rubber galoshes to slather on make up in the tiny mirror embedded in the passenger seat's flip down sun visor.
A long row of tripods lined the bank of the Turning Basin. Those that had left pre-positioned heavy camera equipment had them covered with blankets, shirts and jackets to prevent moisture from collecting on their camera glass. One brave soul had waded out into the marsh and set up two tripods on a tiny little island that jutted up from the darkness. The commotion and lights would probably ward off most reptiles, but (in Florida) it's an unnecessarily stupid risk for a damn good photo.
I found a spot just behind the Countdown Clock, next to a row of chairs. The space was just wide enough to accommodate my lone tripod.
"What are your settings," someone asked as I began fiddling camera.
It was, Jared Polin AKA @FroKnowsPhoto.
"People are telling me 'Your settings are going to be overexposed,' "Polin said.
The question had caught me off guard. On a technical level, Polin is much more knowledgeable. On a professional level, his work reaches a much large audience and commands far more respect. He's a successful entrepreneur that used social media to grow his photography business, and establish a commendable charity that gets camera companies to donate equipment to school children. At the end of the day, the man is cashing checks with more zeros than than the odometer on my truck.
I suddenly began suffering from Imposter Syndrome.
"I have no idea," I admitted. "I've never shot a launch before and I think everything is wrong. I've been told that, even though it's dark out -- it'll suddenly be bright as day. Kind of winging it really."
"Me to," he said. "That's why I was asking. I want to get the highlights from the exhaust plume, and I'm wondering..." he continued into a mess of jargon.
"I hate shooting with a tripod," he said. "I'd rather be able to move." He hoisted a massive 600mm telephoto lens with ease.
"Same," I said. "I think I can count on one hand how many times I've ever used my tripod."
In hindsight, this was probably the strangest thing that could come out of my mouth. In the sudden awkward silence, I went back to fiddling with my modest D850 and old 200mm lens.
Unlike watching a launch on TV, there's no audible countdown that prepares you for the moment the boosters fire.
Amongst the chatter of onlookers, you know that there's something about to happen any second, and whatever happens is going to be intense.
So you sit, and you wait. The clock ticks down in silence as you stare at the faint orange glow off in the distance.
Suddenly that faint orange glow explodes and the sky is on fire. Thousands of pounds of fuel push the rocket off our little dirt ball, punching a hole through the fragile atmosphere that protects us from rocks, radiation, and the unforgiving vacuum of space.
It's a marvel of human engineering, thumbing a nose at God and gravity.
The nagging ego monologuing the impossibilities of reality is immediately silenced when the sonic boom races across the water and slaps the gelatinous electrical thinking meat between your ears.
"Goddamn I love that sound," the man next to me said grinning as the boosters belched furiously.
"I heart jet noise," I said deadpan.
He slapped my shoulder and chuckled.
"I used to land on aircraft carriers," he said into my ear. "I always thought that was always the hardest and coolest damn thing. Until this."
Two smaller orange balls of light had begun trailing behind the ever fainter rocket.
"That's successful booster separation," someone form the row of chairs cheered next to me.
The group began shaking hands and hugging each other before hurrying off into the growing darkness. Apparently I had inadvertently set up next to the engineers and staff who had worked on the launch.
The pilot and I shook hands and exchanged cheesy, childlike grins with one eye towards the rocket.
"Now the real work begins," someone said as they walked away
Confused and asked the pilot what they meant.
"Well," the pilot said. "We gotta put a crew on top of that thing, send'em all to the Moon, then bring'em back home."
I laughed.
"We've done it before," he said. "We'll do it again."
I was profoundly confused when I woke up back in my truck later that morning. A cacophony of water fowl were singing.
Over the past few months, most of my mornings in the back of the truck were met with the sound of speeding cars and semi-trucks from some highway.
Fresh air mixed with the faint smell of jet fuel.
After making my way into town, I grabbed a seat at a little diner.
People from Titusville strolled in wearing t-shirts and hats adorned with logos from the Artemis program and NASA.
Servers were greeting elderly regulars and asking if they caught the launch.
Nobody was talking about congressional budgets, elections, the creep of religious nationalism, or a barking fascist ideologue’s lust for power. There wasn't a peep about Russian attacks on Poland or Ukraine. Nobody was talking about the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Egypt, leaders form the 20 most powerful nations meeting face-to-face in Indonesia, or the world’s largest international sporting event being held in the Middle East.
In this little slice of Americana, the race to space was back.
ONE MORE THING...
If you're a regular reader, you know I've been on the road for the better part of a year now. And you've probably noticed Substack posts have been rather slim over the last two months.
The simplest explanation is that a few colleagues and I have decided to create something new. It's still too early really go into detail as there's still a hell of a lot of work that needs to be done.
In order to survive, we all feel its time to evolve. Professional freelance journalists, photographers (and photojournalists) are living and working at a precarious time as hedgefunds destroy newspapers, politicians decry the press at-large, and social media networks implode. Today, our ability to see, say, and show the world to an open-minded audience has never been in more jeopardy -- and it'll probably just get worse tomorrow.
This is one of the reasons I've been relentlessly traveling on an extremely bootstrapped budget. It’s also cheaper.
I'm hoping to be able to talk more about this project in greater detail within the next few weeks. The Smoke Eater isn’t going anywhere, it’ll always be free and I’ll continue begging you, fine reader, for gas money. And for Patreon subscribers, I’m still trying to find the best supplier for merch.
Now I leave you with Beans, the toothless barn cat, and her compatriots, Gia and Sailor.
OK, here's your cute critter video!
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