I'd imagine at this point, a lot you haven't just found me from twitter, furryposting or otherwise. It was probably one of those really big Posts I did about a space thing, or my rocket launch photography on @aWildLupi and like.
It's reasonably fair to ask what qualifications I have to talk about that stuff, do I work in the industry, did I go to school for it, what do I do? Why did my queer ass willingly move to the state of Florida 3 years ago (almost to the day! July 9th, 2020) over it?
The short answer is that I have no formal qualifications (I flunked out of an Aeronautics degree thru Embry-Riddle remote learning, at most) and just Autism Hyperfocused my way into a passion about spaceflight after picking Kerbal Space Program up in the 2013 steam summer sale. But that's not the question I set out to answer. That's how I got here. What do I do?
I can't recall having ever talked about it at length here, maybe I've mentioned it in passing once or twice, but never really went into detail. I run a website for rocket launch viewing outreach, a guide to help folks travel to witness that really incomparable sight of a skyscraper ascending to the heavens on a pillar of fire with a ground-shaking roar.
Nothing brings me more joy than watching anywhere from one person to a whole crowd get caught up in the excitement, cheering as they see that blinding bright streak of flame start to climb from the launchpad, hollering until the sound of it hits them, having traveled several miles to deliver sometimes bone-shaking, window rattling roars.
I bring a spare pair of binoculars whenever I go out for a launch, and a whole ziploc bag full of cheap Walgreens 4x6 prints of my rocket photos to give to kids and first timers. I actually need to do a new run of those, soon(1).
Sharing that experience with people is just about the most fulfilling thing I can do. Genuinely, if any of you here on Cohost want to know how to see a launch here from the space coast, get in touch, I live for this.
And before I tell any more stories about the industry as a whole, historical retrospectives, industry analysis posts, whatever, I wanna tell this story. There's probably going to be a call to action at the end, but I hope that's fine. It's an important story to me.
And it's the story of a little website called LaunchRats.
There aren't many resources out there for how to watch a rocket launch. The information is out there, but it's not necessarily well-collected, organized, or convenient. For a long time, aside from the occasional mission-specific news article, the best option was Ben Cooper's website, which, to this day is still a good option, especially after he's updated his website layout to make it look neater and cleaner. It'll tell you, generally, where the best view is for a specific launch.
But there's more places to see a rocket launch than just the best one, and while a lot of that information could be applied generally, it wasn't quite a general repository, at least not at the time.
In early 2018, my late, great roommate, WaywardPlane of Space Twitter started something. The first SpaceX Falcon Heavy had just done its test fire, and was leading up to launch. It started with a twitter thread, just a quick round of advice about common viewing spots in the area, how to prepare for the big day, et cetera.
By tonight, I'll probably have a website. 🙄
This spiraled, as a later comment reply foretold, into a google map, and then a full on website. On that day, Launch Rats was born. I can't tell you how the name came to be, I think? It was either unintentionally or deliberately a riff on the "pad rats," the nickname for crews who work on the launchpads. They're not exactly around to ask at the moment, so, some things will remain a mystery.
I think in the early days, the site was just a redirect to that custom Google Map, but it didn't take long for Wayward to dust off the web design skills they hadn't used much since working for CNN.com in the early 2000s and twist Wordpress' arm into making something they liked.
From there, it was off to the races, a bunch of their friends joined in on it to help out, and someone liked what they'd done so much that they bought Wayward the 200? dollar ticket to watch the Falcon Heavy demo flight from KSC up close.
For... essentially the rest of their life, the 3 years from its founding to their passing, they were absolutely dedicated to the site. They might not have pushed a whole lot of content, a lot of it was on the related Twitter account, but they would reply to launch viewing inquiry emails/dms/contact forms basically whenever they were awake, always doing their best to ensure anyone that found their guide had everything they needed to come and see a launch.
I had contributed a few things over the years, photos, an article or two, so on and so forth, as one of the folks helping the site along and sharing that passion to get people here to share in this unique experience. Ultimately, Wayward had a falling out with the other major contributors, so when they fell ill with terminal cancer during my time as their roommate, we endeavoured to set me up as the one to take on the site's duties when all was said and done.
For my part.... I've done my best, but there's a lot of ways I struggle. I don't know how to bully Wordpress into working, so the most I could do was answer inquiries thru twitter/email/contact form, and write blog posts occasionally to sticky to the main. Part of that is my technical ineptitude, but part is how Wayward basically broke everything into working Their Way, in ways that made sense when they learned how to make websites.
There's a wealth of information on there, or at least places to share it, but the site's organized in a way that only made sense to someone who's no longer with us. There's no searchbar, navigation, or anything to indicate that any of these specific pages on launch viewing areas are even there except the site directory in the sidebar, which isn't even laid out in a way that makes sense.
There's a lot more depth to the site, or at least there could be. I want to do more with it. When the Artemis I launch of the moon rocket took place, I was doing live on-the-ground reporting through twitter of how the crowds were filling into Titusville in the days before. I'd take my bicycle from where I live, all the way down to route 50 (where traffic starts coming in from Orlando and I-95), and back.
There was one morning I'd gone to Port Canaveral to see the SpaceX rocket brought in on barge, and instead of taking the bus back from Cocoa, I rode my bike the 20-odd miles up US1, stopping to take good photos of every public park with the intent of filling out the myriad stub pages each of em have.
The dream has always been to pivot the site into being what it should've been from the start, if Wayward could've executed on it, the thing it tries to be but is held back from being by its layout. A fully featured index of guides and information about how and where to see rocket launches, with a catalogue of viewing sites for reference and both general purpose guides and guides for specific big-ticket launches.
Something where I could approach a whole ton of the local businesses around here, the ones that already have ad spend budgets and put up billboards on the freeway and sponsor local events, to see if they'd run ads. Places I genuinely go anyway, like the restaurants in Port Canaveral, or hell. Maybe even see if Delaware North wants to run their own ads for KSCVC(3). Stuff that falls in line with the mission, stuff that "while you're here for a launch, you might like." Ads that like. I already recommend that folks try (x restaurant) if asked, I have no problem giving them adspace.
If the medical billing for the car accident hadn't strung me out for months and been resolved in a timely manner, I would've had more than enough set aside to pay a close friend who ran a Kings Island fansite for years (and thus really understands what I'm goin for) to help fix the site layout. Instead, time and necessity ate into both the slight excess from the gofundme, AND the 1000 dollar tax return i got. So I dunno where i'll be sitting after it's all said and done.
I warned about a call to action at the start. I'm fixing to pay off the final medical bill, then I have to deal with whatever shit the power company throws my way. While my job prospects continue to be "none," this might be the only option I have at getting any sort income, and it's doing what I love.
I don't know how much I'll have left over after these bills, so I haven't even asked my friend for a quote yet. But I won't take free work on the website, not for that much of an undertaking. While the site itself doesn't have a patreon, I treat it as falling under my own personal one. I also sell the aforementioned rocket photos in better print quality (than the walgreens ones mentioned earlier) on my gallery site(4). There's also the paypal direct tipping link but I always feel bad about direct tips when there's other options that are more mutually beneficial.
I might start a fundraiser once I see where I'm at, either formally or informally. Probably informally.
But to close things out, what do I do in aerospace? I sit by the water, give a random kid my binoculars, and watch their face light up as they see the rocket go. I do my best to help facilitate that moment for everyone I can, and I want to do a better job of that.
And to that end, to be clear. if any of you on Cohost ever have any questions about how to see a rocket launch here in Florida for yourselves, get in touch.
Thanks for reading,
Lupi
launchrats.com
Footnotes that didn't work the normal way:
- if you're interested in, i guess "sponsoring" a run of these, let me know and I will send you a handful of em in the mail as thanks. Walgreens does pretty okay unit rates on big orders, but its still a lot for moo to drop without a really stellar one.
- i wish i was able to find an actual like. cohoard style way of fake embedding a single tweet, this is the best i could do while doing extreme mutiliation of a cohoard template.
- Delaware North is the company that runs the KSC Visitors' Complex, the tourist attraction with the Rocket Garden, the Space Shutte Atlantis exhibit, and also provides paid launch viewing at some of their on-base locations like the Apollo/Saturn V Center exhibit hall along the Banana River, and the LC-39 Observation Gantry along the crawlerway.
- smaller items have better margins, so 4x6s and 5x7s and so on, a big nice metal or canvas print isn't gonna make me more than like 20 dollars but it costs you like >100.
