A Sense of Scale

This was yesterday’s NASA Image of the Day, which happens to feature the issue on Endeavour that scrubbed today’s launch:

In this image, taken June 14, workers on Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39A prepare to remove the 7-inch quick disconnect and flight seal from the Ground Umbilical Carrier Plate, or GUCP, on space shuttle Endeavour’s external fuel tank. Teams are removing the hardware to change out seals in the internal connection points. The GUCP is the overboard vent to the pad and the flare stack where the vented hydrogen is burned off. On June 12, a hydrogen leak caused the STS-127 mission to be scrubbed. Endeavour is scheduled to launch on its STS-127 mission on June 17, 2009, at 5:40 a.m. EDT. Image Credit: NASA/Tim Jacobs

I have always liked the sensation of feeling quite small while staring up into the night sky — a reminder, a sense of scale, I suppose — and the people in this picture give you an idea of just how big a Space Shuttle is. It’s not something you can really get through your head, looking at a shuttle-on-launch-pad picture. The picture is cropped and shown at larger size on the original page, and I encourage you to go there and look at that as well. (And download the highest resolution possible. Y’know, because I think you should. It will enrich your life to do so.)

It reminds me of one of my geology professors talking about field work; specifically, having a student climb up some impossible cliff, because “I need ya up there, for SCALE.” (The professor was photographing or sketching a formation, as I recall.)