Hi Dave -- My high school senior class trip was to Majuro, which I recall as having an amazingly long beach. We rode motorcycles around and the native students treated us to a Godzilla movie in a huge old tin theater, which rattled deafingly during a thunderstorm. During my years on Kwajalein the Army launched Nike Zeus and Sprint interceptor missiles from the end of our island -- the launch site, because it was a little manmade hill higher than anything else on Kwaj, was named Mount Olympus. Later the government built a launch pad away from the island, I think on Meck. The atoll is still an important test site. Nike Zeus was about 65 feet long and when one blew up we'd see these spectacular smoke trails and then chunks of debris cartwheeling down. Because they exploded fairly often, and the launch pad was close to our homes, everyone was supposed to be under several inches of concrete when the missiles blasted off. Most of our homes had flat, thick roofs of several inches of concrete, including my family's. Some folks who lived in trailers had to take shelter in some other building, I don't remember where. But we kids would have missile parties and sneak outside to watch the launches. The night shots were amazing. Ah, home sweet missile base. -- Best wishes, Joe
Joe,
On their website, where they are posting the videos, they mention where the videos are being taken from. One of them, Omelek, was really close to the launch site. The launch caused smoke to come through the trees. The other video was taken from Meck. It showed the islet that the rocket was coming from in the distance, with water between the camera and the launch site. I am assuming that Meck and Omelek are part of Kwajalein Atoll.
In the low res launch video you do get to see a little of the atoll starting at about T+10. You can also see outlines of the atolls. The camera is really over exposing everything because of the bright reflection off of the water. After separation you can see quite a few islands. I am not sure how high and how far away they have traveled. I would think that we should have gone quite a distance so they may not be part of the RMI.
I think that the Atolls of RMI are very interesting. I enjoyed exploring Majuro when we went there in December of 1997 to adopt our two children.
Dave
-----Original Message----- From: utah-astronomy-bounces+david.dunn=albertsons.com@mailman.xmission.com [mailto:utah-astronomy-bounces+david.dunn=albertsons.com@mailman.xmissio n.com] On Behalf Of Joe Bauman Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 8:36 AM To: Utah Astronomy Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] SpaceX to launch at 5 from Kwajalein
Thanks for the message! Did you get to see anything of Kwaj? -- Joe
As other emails mentioned, yesterday's launch was scrubbed. However after some difficulty, today's launch finally happened. It could have been much better than it was. The connection was pretty inconsistent, usually showing a new frame every 5 seconds or so. About the longest continuous stream I was able to get was 15 or twenty seconds. Several times I lost the connection entirely.
Anyway, today's launch got down to 0, the ignition started, then automatically aborted. I never picked up on why it aborted from the control room chatter. Humorously, one of the controllers, apparently not aware his mike was still hot, seemed to be whispering to a colleague, "Look at all that water! Mother @#$%!" He was referring to the deluge of water they pour onto the launch pad to avoid heat damage to the equipment. He went on to express his amazement in similar terms for quite some time.
By and by, they decided to reset the count to T - 16:00 minutes and try again. This time the rocket launched, about an hour after it was originally scheduled to launch.. Immediately upon launching, the camera view switched to an on board camera looking straight back along the rocket's path. It was frustrating because of the inconsistent connection problem. I watched until a little while after the first stage separation, then completely lost connection again. If I could have gotten a continuous stream, it would have been very impressive.
Joe Bauman wrote:
Darnit, I was not able to make this iMac connect to the site. Did anyone watch the launch? Did you get some nice views of my dear old atoll? Best wishes, Joe
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