Ah, I was wondering how last night’s launch went. Just didn’t have the energy to stay up.
We watched the SpaceX launch that went off yesterday evening, though. Despite the clouds and southern trajectory, we saw it for a few seconds. Didn’t hear the roar.
Here’s a marginal photo taken from the corner–so down one house and across the street.
There's lot riding on that Vulcan, and I'm glad the launch went off pretty much perfectly. The Atlas is being put out to pasture with about a dozen and a half remaining rockets pre-sold. Also, ULA is for sale and having their new rocket functional (but not yet certified for national security launches, that will happen around the middle of the year) that'll help a lot.
ULA has a lot of backlog for the Vulcan, it's going to be their bread and butter going forward. I think the big question at the moment is the rate of production of the engines.
It's a real shame about Peregrine. It's almost ironic that the real risk was catching a ride on the first launch of a new rocket, and that part went off just fine.
Keith Tanner said:There's lot riding on that Vulcan, and I'm glad the launch went off pretty much perfectly.
Yeah, it's 5 years late, but it looks like they put that time to good use with a basically-perfect first launch.
I think I prefer the SpaceX "fail early" approach, but I can understand that having those failures splashed all over the newspapers is bad for PR.
In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :
Yeah, ULA can't afford public problems during development in the same way. Although the failure rate of those first Blue Origin engines was a little worrying. It is really funny how so many members of the general public thinks that all SpaceX does is blow up rockets and fail when they have the most reliable launch vehicle ever firing off a couple of times a week.
I'm re-reading Apollo, and there are lots of interesting discussions about the development and testing methods used. Five years late was not acceptable there, so there was a big emphasis on all-up testing.
Keith Tanner said:
It's a real shame about Peregrine. It's almost ironic that the real risk was catching a ride on the first launch of a new rocket, and that part went off just fine.
Yea, that's a bummer- I was really rooting for that Israeli lander a few years ago- but they didn't make it, either.
Too cloudy to see today’s launch, but while standing out front on the curb eating my breakfast, an air-cooled Ruf drove by.
But I did see Sunday’s launch.
I was in a meeting this morning with someone in Cocoa Beach and he warned us about the background noise form today's launch, so Not quite a picture, but sort of live for me.
Its been long enough now that I can probably post some pictures from the tests we used the Shuttle Landing Facility for (3 miles of runway) and the Antonov that was making a delivery while we were there, or the F-5's that were out for engine run ups.
Cool and, sadly, I didn’t hear the rumble up here in Ormond.
The weather is behaving nicely so we've got a high likelihood of launching crew #8 at 10:53 PM ET tonight.
Yep, and although it's not a launch, was pretty cool they did a Starship wet dress rehearsal tonite. Very cool all lit up by the lights. Hopefully a launch won't be too many weeks away
In reply to RX Reven' :
We got a glimpse of Sunday’s launch. I know, it’s a junk photo. 
It was so foggy last night that we didn’t even try to watch.
I had some hardware I was responsible for in my previous employment shot into space on a SpaceX Transporter launch out of Vandenberg in CA yesterday morning. This was the third set of optical terminals I've had launched.
This is picture of the second launch that went outta The Cape last year: 
In reply to rdcyclist :
Congrats!
That launch almost got lost in the action - SpaceX popped off a crew launch, your Transporter launch and a Starlink launch in one 24 hour period. Also did a full wet dress rehearsal on Starship. It was a heck of a day.
Kind of snuck up on me, but it might be a go tomorrow morning. This looks to be the same profile as the previous attempt. Sub-orbital with Starship (destructive I believe) splashdown near Hawaii. Pretty much garenteed to be interesting whatever the results.
SpaceX gets green light for third Starship test flight
....SpaceX is once again set to fly its gargantuan Starship rocket — the most powerful launch vehicle ever constructed — after federal regulators approved the company’s plans for a third test flight.
The launch could take place anytime during a 110-minute window that opens at 7 a.m. CT (8 a.m. ET) Thursday, according to an email from SpaceX sent Wednesday afternoon. A live stream of the event will begin on the company’s website about 30 minutes before takeoff....
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/13/world/spacex-starship-test-flight-scn/index.html
In reply to aircooled :
It's a different profile, actually. They're going to test in-orbit propellant transfer and open a payload door. They'll also fire up some Ship engines in space, targeting the Indian Ocean.
https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-3
I believe that the booster will do a simulated landing, although I don't know at what altitude. I think the intent is to crash the Ship hard enough to unzip it.
Too cloudy to see tonight’s launch.
In reply to David S. Wallens :
My grandson is down there at the Kennedy Space Center for the weekend with the JROTC. He said they didn't do a launch. He was pretty bummed because their hotel is right across the river from the complex.
Well, it's made it up to space, now it's coming down. We'll see if it lands as planned.
The views of the plasma during reentry are incredible.
Ship isn't intended to land today, the plan is to have it hit hard. But we do want it to survive in one piece to the water.
The booster coming down through the clouds was fun to watch. It almost looked like the turbulence of going through the cloud base threw it off a bit. Seems like it hit a bit harder than expected.
The plasma forming on Starship as it started to hit the upper atmosphere was very cool to see.
As noted on the feed I was watching this launch effectively shows they can use Starship to launch heavy payloads which is a big step. Getting Starship or the booster back are just money saving steps.
Looking like Starship broke up on re-entry at this point, but overall, seems like a very successful mission.
So, totally successful launch and separation.
Booster lost control on the way back down. It looks like it might have been a control software problem, it got into a tank slapper. So it wasn't able to do the landing simulation. First time they were able to test that.
Ship did a propellant transfer demo (that was really important for future missions) and opened and closed the payload door. The engine relight demo was skipped - that was being done autonomously, so we'll have to hear later why that was scrubbed. The Ship reentered and we got some astounding views of the plasma around it, but we lost contact with it about 65 km up.
So they didn't pull off everything they wanted but if the mission was simply to put something into orbit, that would have been a successful launch. I'll bet the next one carries a real payload. I can't wait to hear how the payload transfer went off and what happened to the booster and ship eventually. That plasma view alone was something we've never seen before.
That is one gorgeous rocket, and it's so easy to lose the sense of scale. It's bigger than anything that's flown before. The ship alone is only about 20' shorter than the full Shuttle stack.
That sounded like I was watching a Chisholm Hunter video.
I was at SpaceX today in LA - they were in high spirits about the launch.
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