Catching Up

A few things changed over the weekend since Saturday night's post. 

The biggest was that the trio of SpaceX launches in four hours 38 minutes wasn't completed. When that was posted, the first launch had happened and I was waiting for the rest. The second one was delayed but went off and was better visually here than the first. The third, the Starlink 7-18 group from Vandenberg was delayed a couple of times, and when the fourth delay moved it from Saturday night after 11 PM (my time) out past midnight, I decided it didn't sound like it was going to go and went to bed. It didn't go.

That launch was originally rescheduled for Sunday night but as the day went on, it was moved to Monday night at 10:30 PM my time. 

It's not the only one delayed. 

The final Delta IV Heavy launch had originally been moved from last Thursday to Friday, March 29, but quickly got pushed out to today, Monday April 1st. That schedule only held up for a few trillion nanoseconds before it was changed again. The currently scheduled time is for next Monday, April 8 at 12:57 PM Eastern here from CCSFS SLC-37. 

Commenter Igor remarked after the reschedule to today, "Put off until Monday the 1st. Probably didn't have the necessary part on hand." That's most likely the case because after the computer called the count abort on Thursday, ULA CEO Tory Bruno Tweeted that a "Pump failed again." It sounds entirely possible that the part needed to get the pump working wasn't on hand at the Cape and couldn't be shipped overnight here.

ULA's site dedicated to the NROL-70 flight added further details:

(Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla., March 28, 2024) – The launch of a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy carrying the NROL-70 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office was scrubbed today due to an issue with a liquid pump failure on the gaseous nitrogen pipeline which provides pneumatic pressure to the launch vehicle systems.

The team continues to troubleshoot the pipeline and more time is needed to instill confidence in the system. We will continue to work with our customer to confirm our next launch attempt and a new date will be provided upon resolution.

I should add that the ULA site just linked to above the indented (copied) text does NOT list the April 8 date and time for launch. That date was from Next Spaceflight. 

The final Delta IV Heavy on the pad at Cape Canaveral.  ULA Photo

And now for something completely different, completely unrelated to anything I've written about in years.  

We went to the noon showing of Dune 2 at our usual 10-plex movie theater today. The crowd was unusually small for our movie visits, the two of us and another couple. The crowd is often six to 10. This is a movie that has been out a full month, long enough that I was concerned that if we didn't get to see it, it would end up on some streaming service we don't subscribe to. 

Thinking I might have written about watching the first of the Denis Villenueve Dune movies in 2021, I did a search and found it easily. 

I could lift much of the review of that one wholesale without changing the review. I was more impressed by nearly everyone in this movie than the first. Both Timothée Chalamet, who plays the lead in the movie, Paul Atreides, and Zendaya, who plays the Fremen girl that befriends Paul, leads him into their culture and eventually becomes a lover, impressed me far more than they did in the first movie. I was very impressed with a new character in this movie, Stilgar, played by Javier Bardem. Stilgar is a major character in the books, leader of the Fremen tribe Paul stays with, and Bardem was excellent. Rebecca Ferguson, who plays Paul's mother Jessica and Bene Gesserit member also impressed me more than in the first movie.

I was simply blown away by the visual magnificence of the production, special effects, CGI, scenery and more. As I said back in '21, because of how long it has been since I've read the books, I can't say much about how faithfully this new version follows the story arc; all I can tell you is I recognized virtually every scene in the movie from the books and understood unspoken things about the scenes. Like the first one, it's a long movie at 2h 46m. Don't get the theater's 55 gallon drum of Coke.