Mission to Cape Canaveral
Day 1: Enroute to Orlando

Tuesday, September 23, 1997

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Departing San Jose

Finally, the day had arrived which I had been thinking about for most of the year, and planning for months. I was on my way to watch a shuttle launch. But not everything was certain about this one. Congress was debating cancelling the Shuttle-Mir program because of safety questions about Mir arising from February's oxygen-generator fire and June's collision with a supply ship. As I sat at the gate waiting to board the plane, I saw that morning's San Jose Mercury News headline said in big letters, "Shuttle-Mir Docking Iffy". It wasn't exactly what I wanted to see.

However, I expect the media (and especially the "Murky News" as we call it locally) to exaggerate anything they can so that alone wasn't reason to panic. Because of enough of my own online observation of what was going on in NASA and Congress, I was pretty sure Atlantis was going up one way or another because they had to pick up the NASA Astronaut on Mir. I still tried to comfort myself in the fact that I needed a vacation anyway and had a long list of things to see and do in Central Florida, not to mention my ticket to Disney World.

I had used my frequent flyer miles to upgrade a coach ticket to First Class. This was my first time flying in First Class. And like any good aviation enthusiast, I'm usually happy on a plane if you just let me see the view out the window. (I had made sure to get a window seat.)

There were two legs to my trip to Orlando. I was going change planes in Dallas.

Just after 8AM, the plane was taxiing on schedule toward the runway at San Jose International Airport. I know the airport since I've flown general aviation (Cessna 150/152/172/182 and Piper Archers) there as either the destination or origin of many flights ever since I was a student pilot in 1989. Probably the only airport I know better is at Chico, where I learned to fly. Still, even on the ground, the view from a jet is different...

I got my camera out to prepare to take some pictures in flight and then discovered a problem... all my film was in my checked-in baggage! Oh well, there would be no pictures on the first leg of the trip. I decided I'd get some film at the Dallas airport if there was time between flights. Besides, I figured there wouldn't be much to take pictures of and I'd run out of recognizable landmarks as soon as we crossed the Sierra Nevada Mountains... Right?

I was wrong...

The View out the Window

As the Boeing 757 lifted off from Runway 31L, it made the usual right turn over North San Jose that most outbound traffic does from SJC to avoid other traffic over San Francisco Bay inbound to San Francisco or Oakland.

The Bay Area has some very congested airspace with 3 international airports and a dozen busy general aviation airports all within about a 30-mile radius. This right turn is a published "standard instrument departure" for SJC that was developed with that in mind.

During the right turn, I looked across the plane to the right-side windows and was looking down at the construction of "Site 4" of Cisco Systems (my employer.)

Alum Rock Park Trails

When we finished the 180-degree right turn, I looked to see if I could see my house. Nope... we were probably flying right over it. Of course, most SJC departures do but they're over a mile up by then so I don't usually notice.

But as I looked at the East San Jose foothills, I spotted Alum Rock Park where I like to go mountain biking. (Alum Rock Park is a San Jose municipal park that extends several miles into the eastern foothills. See descriptions by Bearfer and MTBinfo.) I take the Railroad Bed and Creek Trail past the hot springs and the end of the paved trail to the far end of the park. From my house it's about a 15-mile round trip. I's still curious what elevation I got to.

As the plane climbed through probably about 8000 feet, I could see the whole thing winding up the Penitencia Creek canyon. I thought to myself, "Do I really ride that far?" It's only be a moderate ride as far as mountain biking goes but it looked longer than I expected.

Central Valley and Yosemite

We continued over the mountains east-southeast from San Jose and I soon recognized San Luis Reservoir as we got to California's Central Valley. I've flown a Piper Archer along this route on a flight to Fresno once. As the 757 passed the reservoir, I also recognized Highway 152 from some drives to Yosemite, which we parallelled all the way across the valley. So even without any instruments I knew we were going due eastbound.

As we approached the Sierras, I looked north out the window to see if I could find Yosemite. There is was... Half Dome was what gave it away. Then relative to it I found the Clark Range, which some friends and I had hiked past in backpacking trips. And up and farther away I spotted a cluster of higher mountains (above tree line) which probably included Vogelsang Peak. All in one view out the window I was looking at the route of last year's backpacking trip where we hiked 40 miles in 5 days!

High Sierras

The plane was cruising at 39,000 feet. That's about 8 miles in altitude. From that altitude, the terrain and most weather are well below you. The horizon is continuous in all directions. You can't see the curvature of the Earth from anywhere that airliners can get to, but that's high enough to get a sense that it must be there. Anyway, for a civilian, it's probably the best view I can expect.

And the view was spectacular looking down at and across the long expanse of the High Sierras. I didn't recognize any landmarks among the forests, jagged granite peaks, glaciers and alpine lakes and streams. (Yes, there are glaciers in California.)

I thought one of those peaks might have been Mount Whitney, the 14,500-foot (4420m) mountain at the highest point in California, and all the 48 states. However, I checked a map after returning from the trip. I determined that Whitney would have been visible from the right side of the plane. Nonetheless, the High Sierra are impressive from any angle since just about all the peaks in that area are over 12,000 feet high.

Nevada Desert

The pilot had said we were going to fly over Las Vegas. So I figured that we would be flying around the southern edge of the restricted airspace at the "Nevada Test Site" (former nuclear test range.) I've since gone back to an aviation map and traced that our course over the Central Valley was a straight line to the VORTAC (radio navigational aid) station at Beatty, NV, from which a line to Las Vegas stays just outside the restricted airspace.

I didn't know what to expect to see. Anything military-looking would do, I suppose. I glanced at various places and couldn't find any nuclear test craters that I half expected to see. It would have been interesting to see (from a safe distance) where all that history occurred.

I noticed one of the dry lakes looked like it had a long, dark and very straight black line all the way across it. There were three big dry lakes in that direction and this was the farthest one. As the plane's travel continued the line got slightly easier to see. It was about as far away as I could see any detail at all, a long way away when you're looking from 8 miles up.

I looked for other details around it. On the right side of the lake, there were two parallel short but straight stretches of land that were lighter-brown than the surrounding brown desert landscape. One of the two was lined up with the long black line like it was a continuation of the line off of the lake. It wasn't a natural formation.

At this point I was beginning to wonder if the dry lake I was looking at was Groom Lake, the rumored US Air Force base where the most secret airplanes are supposedly tested. Common knowledge among aviation enthusiasts says the base was the test site for the U2, SR-71, F-117 and probably others. If so, the lines on and near the lake could have been runways. (There are also other rumors about that place, such as were fantacized in the movie "Independence Day", but let's not bother with them.)

Just as I was about to give up trying to look for more details, as the viewing angle changed due to the plane's travel, sunlight started to glint off of what must have been windows on buildings south or southwest of the lakebed. There must have been a lot of buildings there like a small town. I couldn't see any of the buildings themselves but the sunlight-on-windows effect was identical to looking down over Silicon Valley from its surrounding mountains at sunrise or sunset. The numerous bright pinpoints of reflected sunlight are unmistakable.

At the time, I had no longer any doubt that it was a military base, whether or not it was Groom Lake. From the aviation map where I later looked this up after the trip, I confirmed that it was the only place where I would have seen three large dry lakes almost lined up like that. I was indeed looking norteastward at Groom Lake, across the Nevada Test Site. The aviation maps don't show an airport or anything there but they do show the dry lakebed with its name. Putting the two togther leads to the conclusion that, even though the maps don't show anything but the dry lake, where the maps say "Groom Lake" there's an Air Force base with an unbelievably-long runway.

As an aviation enthusiast, it would be interesting to some day find out what kind of aircraft needs a runway that long...

Arizona, New Mexico and Texas

The plane continued past other recognizable landmarks... like Las Vegas and Lake Mead. For quite some time, the Grand Canyon was visible far to the north. I had forgotten how big and impressive the Grand Canyon is. Later I saw some colorful soil patterns in the desert and was reminded a few days later by a friend in Florida that it's called the Painted Desert. My pilot instincts spotted a lot of small airports along the way, even sometimes in the middle of nowhere presumably on private property. After spotting the Rio Grande, it started to cloud up beneath us as we flew into Texas and then there wasn't much to see on the descent into Dallas.

Dallas to Orlando

At Dallas, I bought a roll of film and had a brisk walk across the terminal. It was nice after sitting down for most of 3 hours. I got to the gate with plenty of time to spare, and the flight left on time.

Just out of Dallas we broke through the clouds and I could then see an impressive-looking line of thunderstorms which seemed to make a wall in our path. This kind of weather I'm not familiar with from California so I kept an eye on it until the food arrived. Remember, this was First Class so it wasn't just your normal airline food. Whatever spices they put on that chicken did the trick for me. My attention was no longer out the window...

Whatever happenned with the squall line, the pilot figured out what to do about it. I got further distracted later when they had fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies in First Class. They baked them on the plane! I took occasional glances out the window but usually there wasn't much to see with the clouds. The route of flight was across the Southern States north of the Gulf Coast, and into Florida.

The view didn't get my attention again until I saw ocean ahead of us. At the angle we were about to intercept it (and maybe also the angle of the Sun), I ruled out the Gulf of Mexico and wondered why we were flying up to the Atlantic. I started getting a bit concerned as we flew over the coast. There was a city down there with a large airport, which I hoped we were using for navigation. Then as I hoped, we banked for a turn to the south and back inland. (Later I was told it was probably Jacksonville since that's a common high-altitude routing into Orlando.)

We did two or three rounds in a holding pattern outside of Orlando before beginning our descent toward what looked like a nasty-looking thunderstorm. (See picture below.) The final approach into Orlando was rainy but otherwise fine. It looks like the weather radar did it's job.

I got my rental car and, even in scattered heavy showers managed to find the hotel at night. (Sometimes it seemed like alternating blocks were either not raining or complete cloudbursts. The Floridians say it's normal.) I checked out CNN and the local media (now that I was in the nearest metropolitan area to the Kennedy Space Center) to get the latest on the launch. CNN was reporting that NASA had made it clear to them that Atlantis was going to launch and dock with Mir. The only question was whether Dave Wolf was going to Mir with Atlantis. After travelling all the way across the country, that was what I wanted to hear.

It had been a good day.

Pictures

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[photo] Typical Florida weather... This was the view from the plane before landing at Orlando around 6PM Eastern. Orlando is somewhere under that dark cloud. When showing this picture to friends, it got the nickname, "Welcome to Orlando. You're all wet."

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by Ian Kluft <ikluft@thunder.sbay.org>