SpaceX does it again!!! + Rolling out Starlink

[STEED]

Alien invasion...No need to panic.

S.H.A.D.O

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by ikalugin

Ofc people for some reason views them as UFOs.

In the literal sense they are UFOs. UFO doesn't mean it's alien, just that it's unidentified.

[ikalugin]

Except they are not unidentified b/c they are identified.

[Von Due]

"An unidentified flying object identified as a Nebula class Mothership from the Andromeda Galaxy by a man who was too drugged up to reveal his name but who kept repeating 'OOOHM RA GOODGODGETTHEMOFFME', was seen over...." is pretty much how identification happens.

[ikalugin]

 

ICBMs make all sorts of interesting stuff, on the immage above you could see Topol as seen from Turkey.

[Rockin Robbins]

Night launches are the best! We see them so often from Florida nobody even comments on them these days. The most spectacular night launch I ever saw was before the You Tube days, but made this look like a candle from a mile away.

It was the first ever launch of the Saturn V, Apollo 4, an unmanned launch in April of 1968. I watched it from the beach at Daytona Beach, 40 miles away, and it looked like an arc welder 10 feet away or so. 200 seconds later I heard for the first time a rumble of such low frequency that my ears itched and I felt in in my feet as the ground shook. This was the launch where NASA discovered pogo before the Russkies did, but we did it in a much less destructive manner.

Apollo 4 shut down the center engine of the first stage before any harm was done and continued on the four outside boosters. It messed up the planned orbit, but didn't terminate the flight with an unscheduled disassembly of the rocket.

The very next flight of the Saturn V launched Apollo 8 to the moon where they learned that the second stage suffered from pogo too. Oops. It's a credit to NASA that they worked with the problem in real time and it affected the mission so little that almost nobody remembers it happened.

[Rockin Robbins]

After exhaustive research, drugs, drink and holding my breath for inappropriate lengths of time, I've come up with the TRUTH. This woman is the world's foremost expert on...............I'm sure something........and she has this earth-shattering revelation.

[Rhodes]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

No, I think that was a weather balloon!

[STEED]

Originally Posted by Rhodes

No, I think that was a weather balloon!

RUBBISH!

Swamp gas caught in lighthouse beams.

[vienna]

I found this really good YT video of the SpaceX Iridium launch, covering it form the first sighting to the final fade away. The video was shot from the city of Alhambra, a suburb of LA, about 9 miles east of Downtown LA; the LA skyline is the collection of tall buildings in the center of the beginning frames of the video:





The night was cold and clear and the sun had set about a half an hour before the launch. From my vantage point, I saw the beginning of the contrail and watched it until the fade away. The videos don't really show the full prismatic effect of the vapor flow after the first stage separation; the sun was still casting rays into the very high altitudes of the rockets path and the refection/refraction produced a sort of beautiful aurora effect. The most curious part of the launch was how clearly visible the separated booster was in the wake of the second stage's contrail; you could actually see it sort of tumble and roll and the firing of what appeared to have been thrusters on the booster, most likely to steer it to a splashdown course...

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

Night launches are the best! We see them so often from Florida nobody even comments on them these days. The most spectacular night launch I ever saw was before the You Tube days, but made this look like a candle from a mile away.

It was the first ever launch of the Saturn V, Apollo 4, an unmanned launch in April of 1968. I watched it from the beach at Daytona Beach, 40 miles away, and it looked like an arc welder 10 feet away or so. 200 seconds later I heard for the first time a rumble of such low frequency that my ears itched and I felt in in my feet as the ground shook. This was the launch where NASA discovered pogo before the Russkies did, but we did it in a much less destructive manner.

Apollo 4 shut down the center engine of the first stage before any harm was done and continued on the four outside boosters. It messed up the planned orbit, but didn't terminate the flight with an unscheduled disassembly of the rocket.

The very next flight of the Saturn V launched Apollo 8 to the moon where they learned that the second stage suffered from pogo too. Oops. It's a credit to NASA that they worked with the problem in real time and it affected the mission so little that almost nobody remembers it happened.

Night launches truly are the best. There are several here in the SoCal area from Vandenberg AFB; most are pretty mundane with a single, compact contrail. It used to be, the launches were never announced since a great many of the pre-SpaceX launches were of highly classified payloads. More often than not, the public would know bout the launches when they saw the contrails in the sky, usually with the attendant speculations (UFO? Russkies? Nuke War?, etc.). Tis last launch was announced in the morning, but I guess it was lost on a public too absorbed in anticipation of the new Kardashian Xmas card, etc. ...








<O>

[ikalugin]

The trail got explained fairly well in this video:

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by STEED

Alien invasion...No need to panic.

S.H.A.D.O

That is still one of my favourite opening sequences for a TV show.

[mako88sb]

Really looking forward to this. Hopefully, if it all goes according to plan they will try for Feb 6/18:


I found out recently that NASA expected a 50% launch failure rate with the Saturn 1 & 1B's which ended up with no failures as did the Saturn V. Pretty amazing considering all the previous issues with much smaller and far less complicated rockets. Can SpaceX pull off the same record?

[Onkel Neal]

This. is. AMAZING!

Saturn V vs Falcon Heavy

[Dowly]

Fingers crossed!