This isn't about politics, so perhaps nobody cares... ;-) I forgot to mention earlier that I dragged myself out of bed at 3:15 Friday morning to see if I could see a weather satellite launch from Vandenberg AFB, which is about 250 miles south of here. Sure enough, it was visible, an orange dot just above the horizon. With binoculars, the dot resolved into a bit of a pillar of fire, so to speak. The vehicle was a Delta II, which makes a nice bright orange fire from its first stage, but the second stage is liquid fuel, much less bright, so I only saw it for 30-40 seconds before it vanished when the first stage went out. Not realizing that there was more than a few seconds betweeen stages, I may not have watched long enough to see the second. .. and it was fading fast and heading for the horizon rapidly. The launch was to the south, so it was moving directly away from me the whole time. It would have been 75 miles downrange when the first stage shut off, 40 miles altitude.
Not a spectacular sight, but pretty cool knowing what it was. Dave Land was quite a bit closer and also saw it, so he might add his impressions. My only disappointment is that I wasn't on board. Well, I would have wanted a few other things on board with me. Food, oxygen, etc. When I was a kid, they promised me we'd all have a chance to go into space! And here I am a (unusually young) grandpa, but can I buy a ticket? Nooooo. (This wasn't nearly as spectacular as the Peacekeeper launch we saw a while back. Peacekeepers climb much higher initially and it was just after sunset, so the sun lit up its exhaust dramatically.) Nick -- Open WebMail Project (http://openwebmail.org) _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
