Hold your
breath. We're
going up.
A single rocket on a single pad, and thirteen kilometres of sky above it. Keep scrolling — the engines are already lit, and everything from here is altitude.
The pad
lets go.
Ignition, then the slow lean off the tower. The ground drops away and the whole machine leans into the climb.
Straight through
the weather.
The cloud deck rushes down past the fins. For a few seconds there is nothing but white, and then it too is beneath you.
The blue
runs thin.
Higher, and the sky forgets how to be bright. The horizon darkens to indigo, and the first stars come out while the sun is still up.
Into the
black.
Above the last of the air the sky simply ends. No fog, no colour — just the engine, cooling now, and a field of unblinking stars.
And there
it is.
The planet swings up from below — a bright, curved rim of atmosphere against the dark. Earthrise. The reason anyone climbs this high.
of your own?