Rocket Launch: On Film

By: Lauren Kammerdiener

Though my house in Florida is nearly one hundred-fifty miles from the Kennedy Space Center, you can still, on a clear night, witness its rocket launches from the very same platform that sent the first man to the moon. This particular launch is an addition to the SpaceX program, an ongoing effort to create a satellite system providing Internet services to unreached parts of the globe. Men are no longer hurled from the marshes of Florida into the depths of space, but looking back at these photos, captured from in my own backyard, it is compelling to wish they still were. The rocket arcs over the horizon, soaring at speeds of 8km a second, in an undulating line of light and power caught by the camera lens before it finally winks out of sight into the universe beyond.

Men are no longer hurled from the marshes of Florida into the depths of space, but looking back at these photos, captured steps away from my own home, it is compelling to wish they still were. The human imagination has been looking upwards for millennia, and even as we have slowly unraveled the mysteries of space exploration, the sky still fascinates, as it did for me as I took these photos. Here, the rocket arcs over the horizon, soaring at speeds of 8km a second, in an undulating line of light and power caught by the camera lens before it finally winks out of sight and into the universe beyond.