Liveblogging Launch Pad

Last night I stood higher on this planet Earth than I think I ever stood before. The Wyoming Infra-Red Observatory is in the proper place for such a thing, atop a mountain, at the end of one of the most hair-raising roads I’ve ever ridden up – rough dirt track, barely ever more than one car wide, hair-pins at atrocious angles, cliffs on one side and the fall right there on the other, always in the corner of your eye – and that end comes in at around ten thousand feet.

I’m a little surprised, a...