I grew up during the cold war. I wasn’t concerned that nuclear war might happen, I was positive that it inevitably would. You remember how things were, right?
I had a recurring nightmare. It happened every so often. I would be outside with friends and family, just hanging out and doing stuff. We’d all look up in the sky and see a rocket heading in our general direction. I, and I assume all of us, knew exactly what it was. Our number was up. We’d watch in silence as the warhead at the top of the rocket drifted ballistically into our neighborhood and then vaporized all of us.
Last Monday, while we were at the after hours event at Magic Kingdom, a big chunk of that nightmare came true. Everything except the warhead vaporizing us part. We were all walking near the Merry Go Round when we saw something that looked exactly like the rocket in my nightmare climbing into the sky.
It flew across the sky, broke into three pieces, and then the middle piece continued in the same direction while the two on the sides curled off in opposite directions. Given that I am here writing this you can assume that nuclear weapons did not destroy central Florida and that we survived the holocaust.
I figured it out quickly, but there was a fraction of a second there where I was 100% positive that my old 80’s cold war nightmare was finally coming true. Someone near us found the truth on Google. Space X had a launch scheduled for that night at about that time, and that’s absolutely what we saw.
It was awesome. Absolutely awesome. Ignoring the douchey Elon Musk asshole connection, it was the second coolest thing I’ve seen in the sky above Florida.
The coolest thing I’ve seen in the sky above Florida was of course the Space Shuttle launch on May 31, 2008. That still takes the cake for three reasons.
- It was NASA, not Space X
- It was during the day
- It did not involve anything even remotely related to that putz Elon Musk.
Inside the Red Head's Head 