What It's Like to View a SpaceX Falcon Heavy Launch
I was at the first FH launch, at the turn-basin viewing area, because a friend of mine works for NASA and got the good, good, good tickets.<p>I decided to heed the "experience it with your eyes, not through a phone" advice, so the only cameras I set up were fixed on tripods and not guided. I bought a thermal camera some time back, and it dawned on me that I'd never seen civilian thermal video of a launch, so I decided to give it a try:<p><a href="https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/thermal-imaging-gallery/msg1419723/#msg1419723" rel="nofollow">https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/thermal-imagin...</a><p>Apparently I wasn't the only one with that idea -- scroll down two more messages in that thread, and the OTHER civilian thermal video of that very same launch, was shot by another reader of the same forum, a few feet away at the same area!<p>I had another camera facing the crowd, to capture the faces and the oohs and aahs, but the footage sucked. They had speakers set up that pipe in the countdown audio, which is all well and good, but then they made the inane decision to pipe in the sound of SpaceX's own throng cheering, with way too much gain, so it just made the entire audio experience a clipped screaming mess.<p>I stepped away from the speakers to experience the rocket myself, and I'm glad I did.