Space Shuttle

The image that you're looking at on the left hand side, is today's news of the blast-off of the final voyage of the Space Shuttle and on the right hand side, a picture that I took around 1982 when the first space shuttle trials were taking place. They experimented by piggy-backing the shuttle on the back of suitably adapted conventional aircraft, taking it to the edge of the atmosphere and then dropping it to allow it to glide back to earth.

At that time, after much research, I'd purchased the camera of the year 1982 - the Pentax ME Super and along with it, an 80-200 Zoom (which I still use sometimes). On the day that I took the photo, I loaded my camera kit in the car as I'd heard that NASA had arranged a fly-past of some of the places in the UK that had contributed to the build of the shuttle. I'd no idea where or when but I volunteered to pick someone up at Glasgow Airport that day so that I could be out and about.

When I got to the airport, I enquired and they said that the fly-past was going to happen at the airport in about 45 minutes and that the best view would be from the top of the car park. I couldn't believe my luck. I picked up my colleague and we got to the car park in good time. I managed 6 shots in total as it approached the runway around 100 feet up and then accelerated upwards and banked away to the south. It was an unbelievable thrill.

I was delighted with the pictures but when I put the negatives back in for some copies, they came back scratched. I'm sure the shop must have run-off loads of extra prints. Anyway - I've scanned the picture to my blipfolio and you can see it here. Enjoy