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comment by easynow
easynow  ·  4163 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Still blowin' my mind

TIL about Saturn V thanks





TIYP  ·  4163 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Dude, I lived 160 nautical miles from the Cape, with a pair of 6x35 Tasco binoculars I could read

U

S

A

on the side of those things as they arced into orbit.

Good Times.

The Saturn V shook the fresnel lenses out of the Ponce Inlet Lighthouse about 40nm away.

When they launched the first shuttle, I was on the Main Street Pier in Daytona Beach.

Closest thing to an earthquake I ever felt, it was before they installed the water dampers. Millions of gallons of water beneath the plume of the rockets.

The first shuttle had most of it's teeth knocked out on launch, many tiles were left on the pad from the shockwaves.

user-inactivated  ·  4162 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    I could read [...]

Were the binoculars on a tripod? Is it possibly/easy to track stuff like that by hand?

TIYP  ·  4162 days ago  ·  link  ·  

at that distance apparent speed is slow. i had 20/10 vision back then and a steady hand, the letters were at least 50 feet tall.