Photo: Pier with rocket, at night

Text:  

SHORTLY after sunset there had been juddering green stabs of lightning to the south, but by a quarter to one in the morning there is nothing in the warm, wet July air over Cape Canaveral but a thin patchwork of moonlit cloud. And then, precisely at the time it was meant to happen, there is a sudden light on the horizon, some 18km away. A light that rises. 

A 550-tonne machine taller than a 20-storey building is throwing itself into the sky. Its initially unhurried ascent burnishes the clouds bronze. As the rocket climbs above them, its pace quickening, the roar of its engines speaks to its power as the sharp line of its exhaust illustrates its precision...

Economist.  Paywall, of course.