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Mid-Atlantic Commercial Spaceport Makes First Launch
PeeAitchPee writes "East Coast residents of the US were treated to the first launch from the mid-Atlantic region's commercial spaceport. The 69-foot Minotaur I rocket soared from the launch pad at 7 a.m. ET, after teams spent the week resolving a glitch in software for one of the satellites that had scrubbed a liftoff on Monday. I witnessed the launch while driving to BWI airport this morning and it was beautiful! It left a zig-zag contrail in the southern sky and the separation / ignition of one of the upper stages was clearly visible." The spaceport, a commercial collaboration of Virginia and Maryland, is on the Delmarva peninsula south of the Maryland line, just west of Chincoteague Island.
At this early juncture in commercial space travel, let's all pray that TSA doesn't get their paws on spaceport security.
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
One of the neighbor kids asked what was in the sky this morning, and I told him it was the government testing something they might need if Santa flies in too close to the DC-area controlled airspace. It's great to see those little minds so caught up in the emotion of learning something new.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Something's got be funny about someone who names a 69 ft phallic object after the fruit of the most celebrated instance of bestiality in antiquity...
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
And how many Frequent Flier miles will I need for my first sub orbital trip? Man, these are exciting times.
Maryland and Virginia cooperating on something! What's that squealing noise going past my 5th-story window?
one hundred twenty
is just enough characters
to write a haiku
I asked the designers of the Da Vinci Project in Canada when they'd start making launches into space, and the last I heard of the Project was months ago, after a gathering in the south western US for a competition. I guess I'll have to see when they are going to get a launch date in place for the pad that was prepared at Kindersley, SK Canada a couple years ago.
It would be nice to have a "northerly" launch point, even though it's more common to have pads closer to the equator.
Oh You POS
And the US Midwest is roughly in the center of the US and much of it is in the Eastern time zone. Americans have absolutely no sense of direction.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
I made an early morning trip to a local laudromat in Bowie, Maryland. I normally get there a little before 7:00 A.M. EST. Sunrise happens now around 7:10 A.M. It's a pleasure to see the sky and clouds change color and appearance as sunrise nears.
As I watched today, I said, "What's that?". To the east a thin bright white contrail grew longer and longer. What's that? I had no idea. Something "shiny" was drawing a line on the sky. The contrail quickly went from a line to jaggy. My guess - Something must be traveling vertical, going through different wind layers.
Acceleration was easily visible - not at all like a cruising plane. It changed course from what may have been nearly vertical to something much closer to horizontal. At times, a long "wake" was visible - a bright line vee from the base of the "shiny thing".
I had no idea what I was looking at. Now I do.
Shiny? The rocket exhaust flame? The distance from Bowie to Wallops is on the order of 100 miles, I can't have been seeing the rocket itself.
It might be decade or so since that last time I've seen a "not looking for it" launch display from the Wallops area.
No, this looks like a fiscal boondoggle to me. And with the recent change in the membership of the US House of Repesentatives and Senate, one wonders whether or not anything else will ever launch from there.
This is not a new construction. This is land (and launch pads) leased from the Wallops Island facility. NASA has been launching stuff from there for decades.
This is land (and launch pads) leased from the Wallops Island facility. NASA has been launching stuff from there for decades.
You are right, though it's my understanding that the land was actually purchased, along with rights-of-way enabling vehicular traffic to the now privatized (at taxpayer expense) launch area. But even if it is leased, it's a privatization paid for by the citizens of the area in order to boost employment, which is a kind of a boondoggle. This is another means of getting money from taxpayers.
Lease (or purchase) land as a government (but local this time) agency, using taxpayer money.
Create a government agency to "privately" launch satellites using taxpayer money.
Hire the same people being used in the other government site next door because, after all, they're actual rocket scientists using taxpayer money.
Buy something all ready purchased by the taxpayer from the taxpayers by using taxpayer money (a launch vehicle).
Get a contract from a military agency that all ready has launch capability (not being used) by using taxpayer money.
Do the launch by using taxpayer money.
Put out a big PR marketing piece about the success of the launch by using taxpayer money.
Do you see a trend here? Looks like the taxpayers just got boondoggled out of roughly double the amount of money it would have taken in order to just use Vandenburg -- or Wallops run by NASA or Cape Canaveral (which, as it is closer to the Equator is more efficient), also run by NASA. You have a "chase of taxpayer monies" to pay for stuff all ready created by the taxpayer monies, all to supposedly increase employment in an economically-depressed area.
Frankly, I think just sending a check to the people in the area so that they might use the money to move out of the area would be cheaper.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
So many problems. Lets see, where to start? Lets start with the word "cobbled" shall we. You NEVER just cobble together some rocket motors. When OSC (or others) use military rockets, there is an extensive retrofit to each motor: V-band separation instead of linear shape charges, replace liquid injection systems with thrust vector controllers, entirely new avionics, new safe and arm devices, new wiring, new raceway, batteries, etc. Plus, as the acticle CLEARLY stated, it was 2 military motors (Minuteman, probably SR-70 and M-55) and two motors from the Pegasus vehicle. Plus most of the re-used military rockets are re-poures with the cheapest ones I've seen being about $6 million (SR-19 motors). The Air Force didn't re-pay for these motors, but you can bet a civilian launch of the same vehicle would have to figure in the extra cost of the used military motors.
c hSites.html#WallopsIsland
So what if it's a economically challened area, the STATE (and then states) funded the launch pad, NOT the feds. They are lifting themselves up for their own area, not looking for federal handouts. And ranges DON'T hire rocket scientists at all (unless the scientist is looking for a stiff pay cut). These are typical building maintenance and electronic types. Even if they could launch from their own port, it presents two problems. ALL federally controlled space ports are overpriced since their government jobs, and they want/need to have launch sites in different areas to allow different orbital insertion planes. The bottom line is the military likes having places like this or Spaceport Alaska to give them more options and lower overhead.
You should also point to this launch site, since it's a heck of a lot closer:
http://www.spacetoday.org/Rockets/Spaceports/Laun
And no, most military launches aren't any more secure than civilian launches. EVERYBODY is concerned when there is a multi-million dollar highly-explosive vehicle sitting on the launchpad. Only some launches are under super tight security (and contained unlabelled/mis-labelled cargo).
Religion and science are both 90% crap..but that doesn't negate the other 10%.
The minotaur IIRC, is basically a repurposed minuteman III.
The nice thing about solid fuel rockets (as opposed to liquid-fuel), is that they leave a nice, visible trail as they ascend, which often persists for 30 minutes or more. Here on the W/C, we get to see minuteman missile tests out of Vandenberg 2-3 times a year. (mostly in the middle of the night, though).
When you see something like an Atlas or Delta go up, there isn't much of a trail at all, so if you aren't watching closely, you can miss it.
Of course, there are some bad things about solid-fuel rockets; the exhaust is often pretty nasty stuff, corrosive, and toxic. Plus, you can't throttle them back or shut them off if something goes wrong. On the other hand, they're so simple, mechanically, you're not likely to need to throttle them back.
But the best thing about solids, is that they usually supplement the larger Atlas and Delta vehicles, and you get to hear rocket scientists talk about "strap-ons".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Agreed. I saw the head and looked in on the assumption that somebody had got around to building a floating rocket base, to get away from populations and to get closer to the Equator. Wer-ronggg!
I just happened to be outside and looking east and saw it launch... And I was about 300 miles away in Irwin, PA./ detail.html
http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/10552546
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Lesson for other meta-suckers: Don't believe the hype!