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Morning Launch
Rocky Raab
Member Posts: 14,438 ✭✭✭✭
SpaceX is targeting Thursday, March 3 for a Falcon 9 launch of 47 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The instantaneous launch window is at 9:35 a.m. EST.
The first stage booster supporting this mission previously launched GPS III-3, Turksat-5A, Transporter 2, and seven Starlink missions. Following stage separation, SpaceX will land Falcon 9’s first stage on the Just Read the Instructions droneship, which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
A live webcast of this mission will begin about 15 minutes prior to liftoff. Watch it here...
I may be a bit crazy - but I didn't drive myself.
Comments
I'm not into the space launches like you are. But I well remember every boy in in my elementary school counting backwards so we could scream LIFTOFF! I think most of us could do a countdown backwards better than we could count from 1 to 10! Such an innocent time to be a child. Life has changed so much. Some change is for the better but way to much has changed for the worse.
As a follower of our efforts in space I am still amazed by the reusable boosters. Watching one land makes me appreciate the advancements that have been made. Thanks for posting the info Rocky. Bob
Webcast is live. A morning launch will be awesome watching the booster come down and land on that postage stamp of a barge.
dreher, you may like to know that back in the day I was one of only three people on the planet who did live launch commentaries - and got to count backwards for real.
I remembered that. I would think you lived in rarified atmosphere back then. Good memories are great things!
Thanks for the reminder, Rocky. I watched the launch until my DA hughes.net couldn't keep up and kept cutting in and out. Up until that point, it was very interesting.
Joe
I listened to Ricky every chance I got back then .course I didn't know who he was ,other than the guy who had the cool job of counting down the launch Growing up every child wanted to be John Glen or Walter Shirra
Fantastic again, wish they would have had a little more video of the recovery landing on the barge and also deployment of the satellites which will occur in ~45 minutes.
Please don’t forget to update us for the next one.
Mule
Most of the time, they lose contact with the booster when it drops down below the horizon as viewed from the Cape. Sometimes, they get line-of-sight reception of the signal from a downrange station or a relay satellite, and you can follow it all the way to touchdown. Those are simply awesome to see.
Most of my childhood friends wanted to be astronauts. I wanted to be Scotty Powers, who was the guy who did all the early manned launch commentaries. That's his voice in the famous Apollo 11 moon launch videos. I was lucky enough to eventually not only get to work for NASA at the Cape, but to do launches commentaries myself, including two manned Space Shuttle launches. I did way more unmanned Atlas and Delta launches, and even a few Air Force Titan III shots.
My favorite anecdote involved one of those Titans.
My wife and daughters were watching the launch along one of the causeways near the pad, and there were loudspeakers set up all along it. My wife says that during my commentary, one of our girls turned to the next family and said "That's my Daddy!" The man said something like, "Sure it is, kid" Whereupon my wife said, "That IS her Daddy, sir, and she has every right to be proud of it."
Oh, the nest launch is another SpaceX Starlink shot from the Cape, set for March 8.
It must be getting crowded up there! Between the 6500+_active and inactive satellites and all the space junk it is amazing how they can keep track of it all. I realize we are talking different heights for the orbits which vastly increases the area, but still that is a lot of stuff up there. Figuring a safe path for new satellites must burn up a lot of computer time. Bob