Hat tip to Teslarati with an author I haven't seen before for a link to a SpaceX Tweet that featured a fortuitous alignment of Friday's Starlink launch from Vandenberg. You can go to that Tweet link and watch loops of six seconds of video with this part near the middle as many times as you'd like. Yeah, it's just a coincidence of the line of sight, but I've got to tell you lots of photographers strive for alignments like this.
This morning's launch from the KSC didn't offer such views and especially not from here. I was able to glimpse the F9 within the first minute after launch, through the branches of my neighbor's tree, but except for one bright spot climbing into the bright morning sky, which would have been easy to miss, you wouldn't have guessed a launch had taken place.
Friday's and this morning's launches from opposite coasts marked SpaceX’s fifth and sixth Starlink missions for July, which were their 32nd and 33rd launches for 2022. Those two wrap up July, with the next launch set for nine days from today, August 2nd, from launch complex 40 (SLC-40) on Cape Canaveral.
I almost can't believe their launch cadence. We could do six per year, but it was a major grind on us all. How times change!
ReplyDeleteExcellent!!!!
ReplyDeleteAmazing how going all mass production and not hand-crafted, hand-fettled can change the paradigm so very much.
ReplyDeleteMusk stated that manufacturing was the difficult part. Prototyping is easy. And we see the benefits.
Now can't wait for Staship.
Just a little longer, Beans. That spin-start of all 33 engines at once (plus a little spark) was a pretty big oopsie for B7, but not fatal and not much of a setback. They've been testing S24 like crazy, all that's left is a Static Fire and S24 is fit to fly. Booster 7 should come out of the shop this week and start with the testing all over again, after that and with the FAA's launch license, it's SHOW TIME!!
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