Rusty Fischer: Falcon Heavy impressive, but launch not like Apollo or shuttle days

PORT CANAVERAL -- On May 5, 1961, Rusty Fischer was taking a high school exam, while Alan Shepard was sitting atop a Mercury-Redstone rocket at Cape Canaveral awaiting launch to become the first American in space.

Fischer and his classmates were warned they would fail if they left before the exam was over.

As the countdown neared T-1, the entire class bolted outside to watch history being made.

Years later, after he took over his family's Cocoa Beach restaurant, Bernard's Surf, Fischer became friends with Shepard and dozens of other astronauts.

In other words, he has been a keen observer of the space program for a long time.

Tuesday afternoon he was on the deck of his Port Canaveral restaurant, Rusty's Seafood and Oyster Bar, to watch the first launch of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket.

"It really is amazing what he has been able to do," Fischer said of SpaceX founder, Elon Musk.

Still, it didn't compare, Fischer said, to the Apollo launches that sent men to the moon or space shuttle liftoffs from the same launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center.

"When you have a man in the capsule, well that's a whole different thing," Fischer said.

Still, on sunny afternoon, the deck at the restaurant was crammed with people watching the launch, drawing a smile from Fischer when asked if he was normally this busy on a Tuesday afternoon.

"Heck no," he said with a chuckle.

Manned mission or not, though, it was easy to feel the tension build as T-Zero approached.

"What time is it?" Fischer asked as the clock clicked over to 3:45 p.m. "Shouldn't we see it by now?"

No sooner were the words out of his mouth, then the crowd began to point. "There it is," dozens shouted in unison.

A few moments later the roar from the launch began to wash over the deck, drawing oohs from the crowd.

"That's nothing," Fischer said. "Wait'll you hear the boom when they come back down."

A few minutes later, the two outer boosters came into sight as they briefly lit their torches, drawing more oohs from the crowd on the deck.

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And then suddenly, there they were, plummeting seemingly much too fast for a safe landing at nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

But as they got closer, they fired their boosters, and slowed their descent.

And then they disappeared behind cement silos on the north side of the port.

"Man, I thought we would be able to see one of them," Fischer said.

Maybe they couldn't see the actual touchdown, but the folks in the crowd on the deck could certainly hear it as a pair of twin sonic booms hit.

"Well, back to work," Fischer said as he headed back inside the restaurant. "Come back the next time they send a man up."

Contact McCarthy at jmccarthy@floridatoday.com of 321-752-5018