Axiom-1, an all-private mission to the International Space Station is scheduled to launch tomorrow, April 8, 2022 at 11:17am EDT. Four people will head up to ISS aboard the Crew Dragon sitting on top of the Falcon 9 booster.
A cold front is passing through the Space Coast today, and it’s been raining on and off as the cooler air pushes towards us. Forecasts are calling for a 90% chance of acceptable weather at launch time.
Here’s a quick Cold War story from 1962’s Cuban Missile Crisis that few people know of: a single Soviet naval officer prevented a nuclear exchange.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis off of the coast of Cuba, on October 27, 1962, four Soviet submarines had been detected by the US Navy, and were being bombarded by non-lethal depth charges intended to make them surface. The Soviets did not know this, and thought they were under attack.
Soviet submarine B-59, forced to the surface by U.S. Naval forces in the Caribbean near Cuba. U.S. National Archives, Still Pictures Branch, Record Group 428, Item 428-N-711200.
Second-in-Command of Soviet submarine B-59, Brigade Chief of Staff Vasili Arkhipov was the lone dissenter refusing to fire a 10-kiloton nuclear torpedo during the Cuban Missile Crisis that would have surely destroyed its target, the USS Randolph, an aircraft carrier leading an American task group of multiple ships and submarines.
The submarine did not need Moscow’s permission to fire the torpedoes. The other submarines only required its captain and political officer to agree, however, on the B-59, three were required to agree: Captain Valentin Savitsky, the political officer Ivan Semyonovich Maslennikov, and Chief Brigade Officer Arkhipov, who was equal in rank to Savitsky but the senior officer aboard B-59.
As another captain in the brigade put it in an interview with PBS decades later: “I had a written order that I could release it,” says Ketov. “And if there was an order to fire the torpedo I would do it without a second thought. For the first time in life a commander of a submarine had a nuclear weapon and had the authority to fire the missile at his command.” –– Soviet submarine commander Ryurik Ketov
Even though Arkhipov was second-in-command of the submarine B-59, he was in fact chief of staff of the entire submarine flotilla, including B-4, B-36 and B-130. He was also a hero of the Soviet Union, having helped save the Hotel-class K-19 ballistic missile submarine in 1961. That no doubt gave him great sway over the captain and political officer of B-59, both of whom were convinced they were in a wartime scenario and that all options were on the table.
The USS Randolph in 1955.
Had they launched the torpedo and had it damaged surface ships (which it surely would have) then the response from the US would have undoubtedly been a thermonuclear exchange.
You could say we are all here because of Arkhipov.
The lights were on as SpaceX began work on preparing Launch Complex 39-A ready for its next crewed mission. Axiom-1 is a private mission to ISS-NL and is set to launch NET April 6, 2022.
On the left, a crane rises over the construction site SpaceX has opened to build a launch pad for Starship, its super-heavy booster currently under development.
The sun sets on Artemis1 and the first night of its Wet Dress Rehearsal begins.
All was quiet at that moment, and it was incredible to watch SLS start to glow brighter and brighter as the darkness fell behind her.
The sun sets on Artemis1 and the first night of its Wet Dress Rehearsal begins. All was quiet at that moment, and it was incredible to watch SLS start to glow brighter and brighter as the darkness fell behind her.
The day was a stormy one, starting with a tornado warning around 830-9am in Cocoa Beach, which is not far at all from Kennedy Space Center and Pad LC-39B. I was not terribly worried, however, because tornadoes almost always track northeast and that meant it would be offshore before it go to the launch pad. Fortunately, the warning was much ado about not very much and there was no damage to speak of at the beaches.
In between storms (it rained again that afternoon and that night as well) SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 carrying Transporter 4 at 12:24:17 local time, and later, after an afternoon of steely-grey skies and more rain, the clouds parted a little bit to put some color in the gloaming as the sun set.
Artemis herself seemed to grow brighter and brighter as the sky turned to black. Much brighter and taller than the Cape Canaveral Lighthouse, the rocket shone like a beacon into the night. It’s clearly visible from all over the Titusville-Cocoa area, especially on bridges or on roads that give a view up the rivers.
Saturn V’s were the same, brightly lit and easy to see from nearly everywhere around town. It was not only a working spacecraft, but also a symbol that never failed to catch the eye. And given that a lot of NASA workers and their associated contractors contributing to the project live here, Artemis is now what the brightly lit Apollo vehicles were: a reminder of what the mission was.
A closeup of the top of Artemis on her first night of WDR. (Best viewed enlarged…there are lots of cool little details to look at.)
The weather was quite iffy until the final hour before liftoff — in fact, there was a tornado warning nearby with heavy rain to start the morning. The skies dried and clouds lifted just enough for Falcon 9 to thread through them and head to space.
SpaceX Falcon 9 / Transporter 4 Launch, April 1 2022
As you might guess, photography conditions were not ideal, with flat, dull light, but this photo came out decently enough. Not long after liftoff, more rain came into the area, albeit with less lightning, thunder and high winds.
Later that evening, I was able to see SLC-40 from the sea as the sun was about to set. Again, serendipity gave us a break in the clouds and we were able to see the sun peaking through as it fell towards the horizon. The pad was busy as SpaceX workers began to recycle it post-launch, and it was lit brightly into the night as they continued their tasks.
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