"T minus 30 seconds and counting."

"I think she's going to go," exclaims a photographer behind me. "I think they're going to launch!" Against all odds, the unseasonable winds have shifted speed and direction. At daybreak, even the Discovery crew didn't believe they would take off; now, thousands of hard-nosed journalists chatter excitedly as the final seconds tick away. Hands that have been rock-steady since before sunrise tremble slightly as they grip shutter releases and focusing rings.

After years of anticipation, I'm here in Florida documenting America's return to space for the Houston Post. Photojournalists from Japan, Germany, France, Canada, Mexico, Sweden--as well as the United States--hunch over heavy tripods and monster lenses, counting under their breaths.

"Nine, eight, seven . . ." A huge cloud of white smoke shrouds the distant shore as Discovery's liquid fuel engines ignite and gather power.

"Three, two, one . . ." The huge solid fuel boosters ignite and the shuttle, as tall as an 18-story building, leaps away from the pad trailing a white-hot column of fire two hundred yards long. The roar of 7.8 million pounds of thrust overwhelms the elated cheering and whir of motor drives. Seconds later, the rapidly-accelerating shuttle pierces the clouds and Discovery disappears from sight. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief; the months of work and worry have paid off.

But there's more to covering a space shuttle mission than telephoto lenses and enthusiasm. Those seemingly-routine pictures of rockets lifting majestically from launch pads take plenty of preparation and planning.

For instance, safety concerns keep the media 3 1/2 miles from the launch pad during liftoff. As a result, the heat waves and muggy Florida air distort the first critical seconds of ignition and flight. Worse, trees lining the far shore conceal the bottom half of the rocket. Only remote cameras placed in four sites near pad 39B have a clear shot of the event.

Starting from the earliest days of the Mercury Redstone, a whole cottage industry has grown around the Rube Goldberg contraptions photographers have invented to document rocket launches. Infrared, optical, air vibration, ground vibration, and audio sensors abound for triggering remote cameras. Prices range from $5 Radio Shack auto alarms to custom-made $650 geophones. Yet, even to this day, the muffled curses of those whose triggers have failed can be heard wafting gently across the Florida marshes. Photographers must still overcome some tough problems.

First, NASA officials forbid photographers from triggering remote cameras with long range radio transmitters. Furthermore, photographers must prepare their remotes the afternoon before liftoff and leave them. If someone later realizes that their motor drive is off or that the camera is empty, they're out of luck. No one gets much sleep the night before a launch.

--RIDING THE STORM OUT--

Then there's the weather. The Florida coast is notorious for its sudden storms, violent lightening, and high winds. Everyone sandbags or stakes their tripods into the swampy muck surrounding the pad for safety. Many shield their equipment with vented aluminum or Plexiglas housings, and some use air-tight boxes containing desiccant. A few even employ a timer that burns through a Nichrome wire minutes before liftoff, dropping a protective Plexiglas panel away from the lens.

About half the photographers wrap their gear in garbage bags and hope for the best. The aluminized Mylar used in survival blankets is ideal since it also reflects the intense heat of the Florida sun. I used this system successfully in 1984 to cover Discovery's maiden voyage, but it takes a long time to set up. Worse, you must dig through all the plastic to change the film and reset the trigger if NASA declares a 24 hour launch delay.

So I compromised on this mission. A local hardware store supplied three 36-by-20 inch strips of lightweight aluminum flashing for under $1.00 per foot. I bent the strips into cylinders that slip snugly inside one another to fit inside a tripod case for ease of transport. Tough aluminum tape secures their shape. The insides were painted with Krylon Ultra-Flat Black, and 3/8th holes drilled in the bottoms allows rain that blows in to escape.

The tripod screw grips the camera through another 3/8th inch hole, and a thin coat of Archer Silicone Rubber Sealer on both sides keeps the camera and housing from slipping. Finally, I trimmed the length of each cylinder with a pair of cheap tin snips to provide the maximum shelter without vignetting the image. This may sound like a lot of work, but it only took a couple of hours to make three housings. At the remote site, I just fasten the camera and open cylinder on a tripod and focus the image as usual, then cover the back with Mylar.

Fogged optics also pose a serious problem. Rain or condensation often gets on or inside camera lenses and degrades the image. A favorite Rube Goldberg solution is to cover the front lens element with a Styrofoam cup or Tupperware lid. Two rubber bands are attached to opposing sides of the cover; one leads to the unfolded arm of the camera's rewind knob, the other to the opposite side of the camera. The cover protects the front lens element until the camera fires. Then the film advances, the rewind knob turns, and the arm snaps forward--releasing the rubber band and letting the cap spring off the lens. Neat, huh?

I modified this procedure slightly by taping a small bag of desiccant inside the cap to absorb excess humidity. I also noticed that a bare rubber band sometimes tangles in the rewind knob, so I attached a short loop of stiff wire to the end that slips over the arm. Now it's 100 percent reliable. Lastly, use a clear lens cap if you set the camera on auto-exposure. Otherwise, the meter reads the black lens cap, sets a long shutter speed, and misses the entire launch!

Remote auto-exposure cameras should be set on N + 1 to compensate for the shuttle's brilliant exhaust plume. Manual cameras should obey the "sunny f/16" rule. For instance, expose ASA 64 film on a clear day at 1/64 second (1/60) at f/16. This also holds true for those at the press site; the ground haze misleads internal meters.

--A MATTER OF TIMING--

Photographers use a wildly diverse selection of devices to trigger their remotes. The sophisticated geophones mentioned earlier sense shock waves that propagate rapidly through the earth, and light or infrared sensors perceive light traveling at 186,000 miles per second. Both react faster than audio sensors which rely on sound plodding along at 1100 feet per second. This could be a drawback at a site several thousand feet from the rocket. Yet, just to prove that savoir-faire isn't everything, I spoke to one photographer whose geophone didn't fire because brackish swamp-muck leaked inside the housing. Another's light-activated trigger failed because the rocket's exhaust plume blocked the brilliant flame.

Many photographers, including myself, rely on audio triggers. The rocket perches on the pad for a full seven seconds after ignition, so the sound has plenty of time to reach the camera. I used two different triggers out of paranoia.

A $325 Dale Beam made by Protech set on "sound" fired two cameras at site 4. Two additional cameras at a site 3 were triggered by a rather nasty little $35 audio circuit of my own devising. Both worked like champs.

The $35 trigger is a loathsome electrical/mechanical device fashioned from my own fevered imagination; electrical engineers have been known to attack me with smoking soldering irons after seeing the design. However, it does have certain advantages. It's cheap, easy to make, you can find the parts everywhere--and it works! This simple gadget should fire any motor drive with an external trigger port, and those without external ports can be modified by interrupting the continuity between two batteries.

Briefly, the microphone converts the rocket's engine noise into a small, erratic alternating current. This AC signal is amplified and fed into a bridge rectifier, which converts it to DC. The direct current completes a circuit in a tiny relay, which shorts the leads triggering the camera's motor drive. Simple!

This device is very sensitive with some camera brands and almost "deaf" with others. Since there is PLENTY of noise at a rocket launch, the deafness isn't a problem, but those with sensitive cameras should muffle the micro-phone with some soft material so errant breezes don't trigger them accidentally. You need to adjust the volume control so it takes a loud shout to fire the motor drive.

Parts for Audio Trigger

1. Archer 200mW Amplifier-Speaker

(Catalog #277-1008B) $11.95

2. Electret Condenser Replacement Mike

(Catalog #33-1060) $16.95

3. Two 1/8 inch Phone Plugs ($1.39) and Jacks ($1.79)

4. Bridge Rectifier VMC8

(Catalog #276-1161) $.89

5. SPDT Micro miniature PC Relay

(Catalog #275-240) $1.99

6. One 9 Volt Battery. One AAA battery.

Construction of Audio Trigger

1. Install the batteries. Plug the microphone into the speaker input.

2. Connect one 1/8 inch phone plug to the AC input of the bridge rectifier. (It's marked on the component.)

3. Connect the DC output of the bridge rectifier to the pins of the relay's coil. (Also marked on the component.)

4. Connect the "common" and the "normally open" pins of the relay to the jack or plug that fits the camera's motor drive. For instance, the Canon F-1 uses a standard 3/32 inch phone plug; Nikon owners often use a modified MC-12 cord.

5. Plug the 1/8 inch phone plug into the EXT. SPKR outlet of the amplifier. Turn the amplifier all the way up and yell into the microphone. If the camera doesn't fire, possibly the soldering iron barbecued the rectifier or relay. Use a light touch!

I further opted to convert the trigger into a single, compact unit by tearing out the speaker and installing the sawed-off microphone. A plastic funnel slides over the end of the microphone to shield it from rain and add some directional sensitivity. Then I added jacks for a second camera and a timer and filled the case with Silicone Sealer for moisture protection.

But what keeps a passing helicopter or noisy sea gull from triggering the cameras early? The universal solution is to break the trigger's power line with a clock circuit until a few minutes before liftoff. Some photographers with a solid electronics background make their own timers from inexpensive battery alarm clocks.

Many others use the compact, reliable $80 Olympus Program Timer model TM2 designed for the Olympus Pearlcorder. Expensive, yes, but it's ideally suited to the task. You can program it up to a week in advance to close a circuit through its built-in 3/32 inch plug. You can also set it to cut the power to the trigger after a preset period to conserve the batteries. It even makes a dandy travel alarm when it isn't sitting in swamps!

--FURTHERMORE . . .--

With today's high speed motor drives, it's important to recall that the shuttle sits on the ground for seven seconds with its engines firing before liftoff. A motor drive set for 5 1/2--heck, even 3 1/2--frames per second is just too darn fast unless it is on a sophisticated time delay circuit. A remote camera will probably run out of film before the rocket even clears the gantry's lighting suppressor.

This is an ideal opportunity to drag those old two frames per second motor winders out of the closet, or get some extra mileage from half-dead batteries. Aging batteries will slow even the friskiest motor drive to a sedate two or three frames per second.

On a serious note, safety teams spend two to four hours after liftoff verifying that the shuttle's toxic exhaust fumes have dissipated before they allow photographers to recover their remote film. This can pose a problem for those trying to meet deadlines by shipping film from Orlando 60 miles away. In addition, photographers must now sign release forms al-lowing officials to seize the remote film if an accident occurs during a Department of Defense launch.

Most of the remote sites are located in a swamp, with all that implies. One German photographer was preparing a spot on the shoreline during the survey tour at T-2 days, and used his tripod to shove aside a floating log. He subsequently set a world's record for the standing long jump when the "log" flashed an awesome array of teeth and indicated an unwillingness to relocate. The German protested indignantly, "you mean you let them run WILD!"

Perhaps worse than the 'gaters and poisonous snakes are the mosquitoes. The area known as "Mosquito Lagoon" did not get its name by chance. Carry a powerful insect repellent, especially during the sunset roll back of the gantry; otherwise these bloodthirsty little suckers can leave your heart pumping sawdust in a hurry.

The sunset roll back occurs about 12 hours before the launch. NASA puts on a terrific show when they move the Rotating Service Structure back to reveal the shuttle for the first time. They bus everyone out to two locations--one with the sun setting behind the rocket, and the other presenting a magnificent top view of the orbiter. They also turn on huge daylight-balanced spotlights after sunset, guaranteeing dramatic images.

The astronaut walk out occurs just before launch and is less enjoyable. They permit only 75 people to attend this breakneck 15-second event of the astronauts walking out a door, down a sidewalk, and into a waiting van. It's best to skip the walk out unless your client really NEEDS this picture. The crowding and stress make some a bit testy.

Although most prefer to watch the liftoff from the press site, NASA allows 40 pool photographers to place their gear on top of the nearby gigantic Vertical Assembly Building (VAB) to shoot Kennedy's emergency runway in case the shuttle must abort and glide to a landing. Unfortunately, the pool must remain at ground level unless there is an emergency.

Because of the vast number of requests, some journalists had trouble getting credentials to cover this first manned U.S. mission since the Challenger tragedy in January, 1986; but the coverage is much more sedate now. The helpful people in the media center at Kennedy Space Center will tell you how to obtain press credentials to attend. Freelancers and staff photographers for foreign and U.S. publications, stock photo agencies, magazines, and newspapers of all sizes generally have no problem getting accredited.

Edward K. Harrison, Deputy Chief of Public Information, and his friendly, professional staff at Kennedy Space Center can answer any conceivable launch-related question. Their phone number is 407 / 867-7819. I don't understand how they can remain so patient, but I've yet to see them leap across the counter and strangle a photographer, no matter what the provocation. This crack team has assisted confused journalists for years, and bend over backwards helping both novices and "old hands."

It's more than worth the time and effort to attend a space shuttle launch. Television simply does not capture the drama of watching a vehicle the size of an office building ascend into space on a welding-torch bright column of flame. It's hard work, but the reward is the privilege of documenting one of mankind's noblest endeavors--the exploration of space. Don't miss it!