As seen from Playalinda Beach late in the afternoon. The same booster carried four astronauts towards the International Space Station about three weeks earlier this month.
And then there were two. After SpaceX launched Starlink 4-14 on April 21, 2022, there were “only” two rockets standing on top of their launch pads on the Space Coast.
Artemis-1 won’t launch this time around, instead, it will return to the VAB sometime around April 26, 2022 for repairs to a faulty valve as well as other processing. While it is gone, repairs and upgrades will be made to the ground support equipment on Launch Complex 39-B, and hopefully when the rocket is rolled back out, its Wet Dress Rehearsal will run more smoothly.
Crew-4 is scheduled to launch in the pre-dawn hours on April 27th, 2022. It will head to the International Space Station and deliver four NASA astronauts there to being a six-month stint onboard.
I’ve been seeing some discussion about the potential for a new launch pad to be built at Kennedy Space Center — LC-49. This has been on the site’s master plan in one form or the other dating all the way back to the 1960’s, and the potential of it actually being built has risen lately due to SpaceX’s Starship due to come online in the next 6-12 months.
“One potential new vertical launch area, Launch Pad 49, could be sited to the north of Pad 39B. This location avoids overflight issues with Pad 39B and minimizes conflict with the Canaveral National Seashore, giving potential non-NASA entities a flexible set of operational options. In addition, Pad 49 could use Beach Road as an access road, allowing for more autonomous operations and the option to operate outside of KSC’s secured area.”
Some Days You’re The Bug, Some Days You’re The Windshield
From the Port St. John Boat Ramp, located just off of US-1 in between Cocoa and Titusville: I’ve taken some really good night-time streak shots here, and wanted to check it out for a daytime launch, mainly because it’s just off of US-1 and really convenient.
Launch day was iffy from a weather standpoint: a cold front was slowing passing through the Space Coast region, and the ground winds were on the upper ends of SpaceX’s safety limits. After a delay in the morning to the afternoon to let the winds die down, the range was green. Skies were mostly cloudy, with thin, broken clouds showing gaps of blue.
Launch
The rocket lifted off perfectly and on-time at 1:51pm local time, and was another mission well executed. If only the photographer (me) had done his job that well!
The photo above is…okay…but it is not really anything write home about. I’m still chasing down a noise issue somewhere in the camera, and my fear is that it is just a characteristic of the sensor and firmware that I am going to have to live with. The only cure? A better camera. That will happen eventually.
The real issue, however, came from the site itself. As you can see below, there is a power pole that is perfectly situated on the line from the piers to SLC-40 out on CCSFS. After liftoff, that made itself glaringly apparent:
No worries, lesson learned and now I know what this doesn’t make anyone else’s list for launch viewing sites. It’s different for United Launch Alliance shots, because SLC-41 is at a slightly different angle. For SpaceX SLC-40 viewing, especially for photography, I would recommend other places.
As I mentioned earlier, there were a lot of clouds in the sky, and the best photos were made when Falcon9 was briefly visible in the gaps in between them.
At the end of the day, however, I got to see another rocket launching to orbit, and that’s nothing but a Good Thing™.
When I was a kid, Wolfie’s in Cocoa Beach was in its Go-Go period: Apollo was reaching high gear, the Air Force was busy in its own right out on the Cape and when the work was done, there were legendary bars and restaurants awaiting locals and tourists alike. We were part of the locals.
One of my Dad’s favorites to take me out to eat was a sandwich shop by the Ramada Inn, Wolfie’s. It was kid-friendly, unlike a more adult establishment like The Mousetrap, The Surf or other infamous and legendary Cocoa Beach haunts. They’re all long gone now, as is the nature of restaurants in a resort town. Even the most successful ones fade out after a generation or two.
Wolfie’s had a great kid’s menu, and they let you keep the menu if you cleaned your plate. I never had a problem with that (unless it was something I really didn’t like, like liver) so I had several of these. If you look closely, you can see the lines in it where you could punch out the nose and eye to make a mask. All of the kids’ menus I ever owned were worn out just that way.
Wearing one of course made you a steely-eyed astronaut ready for anything. Such was the imagination of a kid, especially one living on the Space Coast. After all, we saw rockets launch all the time, and many of us had parents and/or grandparents who worked “out at the Cape” in various space-related jobs.
What I didn’t know at the time was that Wolfie’s was a place where an episode of “much ado about nothing” had blasted off.
Wolfie’s was the same place that Wally Schirra picked up the infamous corned beef sandwich for John Young on Young’s Gemini-3 flight in March of1965.
The story goes like this: Wally Schirra, inveterate prankster (and one of my Dad’s buddies), was eating at Wolfie’s one day when he and the manager got into a discussion about how terrible the food sent up with the astronauts was. At the time, on-orbit meals were a pasty emulsion that had to be reconstituted with water before the astronauts could eat them. To say those meals were unpopular would be a terrible understatement.
Schirra and the manager, one Carl Ransom, then got a brilliant idea — they would send up a corned beef sandwich from Wolfie’s on the next crewed mission, Gemini 3, that was to be flown by John Young and Gus Grissom. They made some drop tests to see if the bread could survive the G-forces of ascent, which were successful.
When it came time to ready for the launch on March 23, 1965, Schirra gave Young a wrapped corn beef sandwich, which Young hid in his spacesuit and smuggled it aboard the flight. Later, in orbit, he pulled it out and shared it with Gus Grissom — something he no doubt enjoyed more than the toothpaste-like official meals.
Problem was, Grissom was supposed to be the “control” half of a food experiment where he didn’t eat. Grissom instead enjoyed a bite out of a corned beef sandwich from Wolfie’s.
From the Gemini 3 Transcript:
01 52 26 Gus Grissom: “What is it?”
01 52 27 John Young:”Corn beef sandwich.””
01 52 28 Gus Grissom: “Where did that come from?”
01 52 30 John Young: “I brought it with me. Let’s see how it tastes. Smells, doesn’t it?”
01 52 41 Gus Grissom: “Yes, it’s breaking up. I’m going to stick it in my pocket.”
01 52 43 John Young: “Is it?“
01 52 49 John Young: “It was a thought, anyways.”
01 52 51 Gus Grissom: “Yep.””
01 52 52 John Young: “Not a very good one.”
01 52 54 Gus Grissom: “Pretty good, though, if it would just hold together.”
01 53 13 John Young: “Want some chicken leg?”
01 53 15 Gus Grissom: “No, you can handle that.”
They might have gotten away with it, but Schirra and Ransom didn’t account for crumbs in a microgravity environment, and apparently Young and Grissom didn’t know any better. After a very short time, caraway seeds and breadcrumbs were floating everywhere in the capsule. Not a good thing to have, considering all the nooks and crannies filled with circuitry and electronics. A seed in the wrong place…well, some folks said that could have caused a disaster.
Somehow, pictures of crumbs on the Gemini capsule control panel made their way back to Earth, where they caught the eye of not only the flight controllers, but also a space-fascinated public.
NASA administrator James E. Webb was “not amused.” Much concern was raised about safety — the greasy bread crumbs were a serious threat to the safe operation of the spacecraft, according to some. The press had a field day.
That in turn got the attention of Congress. Politicians being what they are got upset that “millions of dollars were being wasted” by the astronauts ignoring the space food that had been sent up, and it even got to the point where the the House of Representatives appropriations committee convened a meeting to discuss the entire “incident.”
“Today the theater that took place inside the meeting room that day strikes me as totally comic, but I can assure you that those testifying for NASA at the time were not smiling.”
— John Young, Forever Young (University Press of Florida, 2012)
In the hearing, Grissom and Young’s boss, Bob Gilruth, told the panel that the whole stunt “was a foolish thing to do.” Gilruth did add that “these little things do help break up the strain [on the astronauts.]” NASA also promised this would never happen again.
Later, in the official history of the Gemini program, NASA noted: “What was not made clear, apparent to either the legislators or the press was that the official food was only there for evaluation of its taste, convenience, and reconstitution properties and had nothing to do with any scientific or medical objectives of the mission. No one expected to learn very much about the effects of space food on so short a flight.”
NASA specifically banned any outside food from being brought aboard one of their spacecraft. “Unauthorized sandwiches” were specifically banned. No more corned beef for lunch, toothpaste is back on the menu, boys. A spokesman said at the time that “NASA is not trying to crack down on humor or crack down on gaiety or quench anyone’s high spirits. We just want to stop, once and for all, any practices which might get out of hand and cause harm.”
I’ll leave it to you to interpret exactly what harm may have arisen, but it’s probably reasonable to think that the danger was just as high in Congress as it was aboard any spacecraft in orbit.
Afterwards
It didn’t take long for the Gemini 3 controversy to settle, but be sure that the Sandwich had left a rash on a few rear ends inside NASA. The extent of that, who’s to say, but for a while some would try to fan the dying embers.
A Just Dessert
Years later, in 1981, John Young commanded the first Space Shuttle mission, STS-1. And on the menu for the flight?
Corned beef sandwiches.
Never let it be said that NASA doesn’t have a sense of humor.
It’s really hard to describe what kind of music Pokey LaFarge makes. He definitely defies genre, or perhaps more accurately, he mixes musical styles so seamlessly and expertly that they synergize into something else that’s entirely original, and completely refreshing. One song may remind you of the East St. Louis Toodle-Oo made famous by Duke Ellington, while another might make you think Pokey was an original member of the Squirrel Nut Zippers.
More simply, his songs are at once nothing like anything else you’ve ever heard, yet they are oddly familiar all the same. And, they’re quite good. They grow on you before you’ve finished hearing them for the first time, and they’re pleasant to listen to on Friday night or Sunday mornings.
He and his band played at the exquisite Bok Tower Gardens in Lake Wales, Florida, a place that is extremely original and unique in its own rite, and honestly, perhaps one of the best kept secrets as a concert venue that I’ve ever been to. It’s completely relaxed and chill at Bok Tower, and the crowd is as laid back and friendly as any you’ll ever come across.
Seen from ~15 miles away, a Falcon 9 carries four astronauts towards orbit on April 8, 2022.
Seen on April 7, Artemis-1 awaits further testing after The SpaceX Axiom-1 mission launches NET April 8th. The day was filled with intermittent rainstorms as a cold front approached and later passed through the Space Coast. As a result, the air was filled with a fine mist, something not atypical on the edge of the shoreline, and that’s where the launchpads are.
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.
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.
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.
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