E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSSIf you've seen pictures of a shuttle launch, chances are you've seen the results of his handiwork. For more than 40 years, Scott Andrews has been photographing launches and landings, and he's aided hundreds of photographers from around the world.
In the field of event photography, the work required to document a shuttle launch or landing is particularly challenging. From standing chest-deep in alligator inhabited swamps to nearly drowning in quicksand, Andrews has fascinating and horrifying tales about the triumphs and perils of setting up automated remote cameras.
Scott Andrews / for msnbc.com
Separated perfectly between the plume and the shuttle, a bird takes flight at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Early in Andrews' efforts to photograph the shuttle, sound triggers were a popular way to trigger remote cameras. He wanted a picture of the sparklers used to ignite the shuttle's main engines at ignition, but the sound wasn't sufficient enough to trigger the cameras. So he adapted a timer to coincide with the countdown. It was the kind of photo that had never been made before.
When the destination is a space station, the shuttle's launch window narrows from hours to just a couple of minutes. So he waited for a launch when the shuttle was going to Russia's Mir space station. With a timer set two minutes before the launch window, his camera started taking four-second exposures on a 36-exposure roll of Fuji Velvia. This enabled him to take just enough frames to capture ignition before running out of film.
Scott Andrews / for msnbc.com
Sparklers flare around the shuttle's solid rocket boosters and main engines as 300,000 gallons of water release just prior to liftoff. The deluge of water provides sound buffering protection for the launching spacecraft. As a part of the sound suppression water system, the deluge is released just before engine ignition to muffle the intense sound waves produced by the shuttle engines. Without water, the vibration from the force of the main engines and solid rocket boosters would shake the launch pad to pieces.
Running out of film isn't the only problem Andrews has faced. Cameras have to be set out long before a launch, sometimes as much as a week early. After cool and humid Florida nights left many cameras with dew-covered lenses, he devised a way to prevent condensation from forming on them. Though he touts the invention as really low-tech, the idea is ingenious. He uses a series of electrical resistors hooked up to a wheelchair battery to warm the lens above the dew point. It's the same simple concept used in electric blankets, but it keeps lenses free of condensation so the pictures come out as crisp and clear as can be.
Philip Andrews / for msnbc.com
Scott Andrews, left, times a delay he built into a sound-activated trigger while placing remote cameras with Houston Chronicle photojournalist James Nielsen at Kennedy space center in Florida, on July 7, 2011.
His innovations don't stop there. He's designed a remote trigger with a time delay built in to conserve memory (or film, back in the day). When the shuttle’s ignition sequence begins, the main engines ignite six seconds before the solid rocket boosters. This is why Andrews built in the delay. Before digital photography, not having a six-second delay meant a camera trigger would expend half a roll of film or more before the shuttle lifted off.
Sometimes his inventions are just reimagined uses of existing technologies — for instance, adapting an oil exploration technology called the geophone, which converts seismic energy (vibrations) into voltage. Andrews uses a geophone to trigger a camera at liftoff.
Not every story has a happy ending. One time Andrews stepped on a stingray that left him with a hole in his foot. The swamps and their brackish waters near Kennedy Space Center have also claimed a few of his cameras over the years.
Sometimes the challenges aren't technical, but involve gaining access to secure areas. This is where Andrews' intimate knowledge of NASA and the spaceflight program comes into play. After hatching an idea for a time-lapse video, Andrews had an idea to mount a camera in a precarious spot over the wing of the shuttle. Understanding the risks involved, he talked to people who could help him work out the safety issues before asking for the access he needed.
Scott Andrews / for msnbc.com
Discovery's main engines are mated to the Orbiter prior to launch.
Andrews even went so far as to get engineering diagrams outlining the physical limits of the gear he was using, and he made backup tethers from aircraft safety cable. All these measures helped build trust, which opened doors to areas where others couldn't go.
"A lot of people barge in last minute, but I go in for a week without taking a single picture," Andrews said.
Finally a crane operator said, "Hang it right under the nose of the shuttle!" So he did.
Scott Andrews / for msnbc.com
A remote camera attached near the nose of shuttle Atlantis captures an image as part of a time-lapse video ahead of its final launch.
And that's how it went: Scott pulled together his son, Philip Andrews, and Stan Jirman and drafted a lengthy proposal for a time-lapse video. He made six trips to Kennedy Space Center for the project. The resulting time lapse incorporated more cool camera angles than he could have dreamed up on his own. Watch the video below:
NBC News' Jay Barbree narrates a rare time-lapse video of the shuttle Atlantis being prepared for its final mission.
More multimedia from the shuttle mission:
Leave a Comment:
Very cool article about the photographer. Would love to see more about him!
I am a teacher and love to take pictures. A few years ago I was able to go to Florida and toured the space center. I was able to take pictures of the space shuttle in the building where they keep it for servicing before each flight. Amazing!!
http://www.scottandrews.com/ Here is Scott's website. Very cool stuff.
Amazing... and a sad end of an era.
Minor correction for the caption under the second photo. The "sparklers" don't ignite the engines they are there to assure excess hydrogen doesn't build up around the main engines.
Thanks for the clarification SeaTacJoel - only a true space buff would know this.
It's time to move on to the future and quit just sending people to a space station. We use to go to the moon, so why aren't we going to the moon and landing there. The space station should be there.
If the space station were on the Moon, then wouldn't it be called a Moon base?
There is nothing wrong with sending people to the space station in orbit around Earth. But I agree that we should ALSO be sending people to the Moon, and beyond.
needed, 400 billion bucks for national debt. kill the space program, deal off nasa to a collection of universities, let them pay for it. The American public hasn't received anything except a few grainy photos for all the billions of our dollars spent on the space program. it's a shell game, with a few science gurus and zealous egotists the only ones coming out winners. thanks, I'll take my coffee black.
romy, If you really think that all the American public has received from the space program is "a few grainy photos", then you really have no idea what the space program does. There are thousands of technological spinoffs and advances thanks directly to the space program. There are mountains of data relating to the solar system thanks the space program. There are volumes of text we would never have known about Earth thanks to the space program. The medicinal advances made possible by the space program have save untold amounts of lives. If you don't believe this then that's your prerogative but it's all true.
mob:
I think the space shuttle program over its 30 year existence has provided more than the trillion dollars plus spent on the two pointless wars in iraq and afghanistan.
Romy if you are going to make a statement about a subject at least act like you have a functioning brain and do some research on the subject before you put your misinformed opinions forth as fact. Otherwise you are performing the proverbial "foot in mouth technique".
Do yourself a favor and educate yourself in the area with facts and not opinions. Most of the things you take for granted today are a direct result of Nasa and its space exploration programs.
I'm very grateful to NASA for what it's done and will continue to do: the "earthrise" photo from 1968 was easily worth many millions of dollars in the perspective it gave us about how unique Earth is. There are technological spinoffs like GPS, and benefits to satellite monitoring of Earth's weather and crops. Hubble telescope and other recent sensors and telescopes have vastly improved our understanding of the big bang and the origin of the universe.
But maybe the space exploration skeptics are right: why spend $18 billion a year on NASA when you could buy a month or two of Iraq war for the same amount?
GPS was a military development, NASA had nothing to do with it.
Killing the shuttle is only about 3 billion, killing unmanned space flight is probably about another 6 billion. The rest of it, if you cut it, you will just have the military get the funding and spend the money. There is no difference. Just think about when NASA retired the big wind tunnel at Ames. Well the navy picked it up and funded it because they realized that they needed it.
Exploration Always in the End Pays for itself and returns Huge benefits!!!