I am starting to get launch fever. Apparently, one can get it not just for rocket launches, but for book launches, too.
I first heard about launch fever when I worked at the FAA. We were studying and adopting the Air Force’s safety requirements for incorporation into FAA regulations. We at the FAA called this codifying current practice and insisted that it would not raise anyone’s costs because the Air Force ranges were already making everyone do all of it anyway. The engineers who worked in the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation and I–as the designated annoying lawyer–spent a lot of time with the safety folks from the Air Force. These range safety personnel were the people who made sure that if a rocket went off course the Flight Termination System had been properly designed and tested. The range safety guys were also the ones who pushed the button if the rocket went somewhere it shouldn’t. That FTS? That’s Air Force (and now FAA) lingo for The System which Contains Explosives and Blows Rockets to Smithereens Safely and Far from People.
Anyway, they were a bunch of rocket scientists. They were also keen observers of the human condition. They always had illustrative stories–mostly about cranes, I came away with a deathly fear of cranes–by which they made their points, and they would also describe what the scene was like in the minus count. Those final countdown minutes are just agonizing. The launch team likely spent years getting the vehicle ready. Launch day could be the third day in a row they’ve started the count and had to stop it.
At a certain point you just want to see the big dumb booster ignite and go, go, go! Is there a shrimp boat in the launch path? Does it violate the launch commit criteria to launch over it? Suddenly everyone’s a 19th century lawyer talking about assumption of risk. That shrimp boat got its notice to mariners to get out of there. If it doesn’t move, surely it must be assuming the risk. Just fly over it. The risk is super low. Really. The range safety guys were like a bunch of anthropologists explaining the phenomenon, the excitement and need to launch the thing.
No one is immune. In fact, I remember taking one of my sons to the first Antares launch out of Wallops in Virginia a number of years ago. The range was green until the final few minutes. We were watching it from across the bay, and I had my “super-secret” FAA feed to keep us up to date on what was going on. My friends Ryan and Jessica were with us and following on Twitter. Turns out everything on my super-secret FAA feed was first showing up on Twitter. That was kind of deflating, especially in front of my high school senior son, but never mind that. Then some weather issue stopped everything.
We were all dying from the suspense of it. I may even have wished someone would give the operator a waiver for whatever it was that was stopping them. It was a safety requirement if I’m remembering right. Normally, I didn’t talk like that. I would stay at my desk far from the excitement, steely-eyed and dispassionate, and inquire as to the safety rationale for granting a waiver, since the law required that waivers not jeopardize, inter alia, public safety. But when way on the other side of the bay you could see the rocket, and if you used binoculars the liquid oxygen boiling off it, you wanted it to go, go, go! so that the earth would sink beneath all that power, your bones vibrate, and your son see a machine that could leave the planet actually do it.
It didn’t launch that day. We went and ate seafood inside the restaurant and occasionally glared across the bay through the big glass windows. Later, however, I realized that I had had launch fever. Fortunately, I hadn’t been there for work or had any role to play in the matter. I was shocked. I was appalled. Ok, not really, but still.
No earth-shattering, bone-shaking, window-threatening kaboom will attend the launch of the third book in my Waking Late trilogy, Like A Continental Soldier. Nonetheless, I am becoming unduly excited. Things are not quite ready for the mid-August launch. The advertising campaign is neither thoroughly vetted nor entirely in place. There are a couple more steps for the print version. Ditto for the ebook. Nonetheless, I just want to hit the buttons, and watch it go, go, go!
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Oh, wow! What a fabulous description of the phenomenon. I didn’t even know launch fever was a thing. But I’m rather relieved to learn that it *is* a thing, and that no one is immune. I’d been castigating myself for a few of the decisions I’d made in the course of my own recent book launch. But now…maybe I’m off the hook! Or am I?
I hope Soldier’s launch goes beautifully and that it soars high, high, high, reaching escape velocity in the book world! 😉
Aw, just give yourself a waiver. You’re fine.
And thanks for the good wishes!