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.

Comments

Fun with kids

[ScentCone]

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.

I saw it

[rrkaiser]

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.

Re:Looks like a boondoggle

[jayteedee]

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.

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/Launc hSites.html#WallopsIsland

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).