space

I’ve been playing around with making videos the past year or so, mainly as an aside to creating still photographs of launches around the Cape.

Honestly, results have been mixed: video requires a somewhat different skillset, even when you are using the same equipment, and it certainly requires your full attention to great anything close to what I’d label as “good.” As far as skills go, I am improving, but have a ways to go. I personally hate the sound of my own voice on a recording, but I need to get over that and start narrating my videos, and I also probably need to put myself on video as well to personalize the experience. I plan to do that with my next video and from there out.

Anyways, here’s my latest attempt at recording the event of a space launch from the viewpoint of being a visitor. I had tickets to the LC-39 gantry, which is the closest place the general public can get to a launch from SpaceX’s SLC-40 complex, and I made video from the gate to Kennedy Space Center Visitors Center onward.

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SpaceX launched 54 Starlink satellites this morning from Cape Canaveral, closing out the 2022 launch schedule for Florida. It was yet another picture-perfect launch.

Skies were clear enough this morning to where we could see the second stage for six-ish minutes. There’s a small gap between the end of the first stage’s powered ascent and the ignition of the second stage. My aim in this photo was to capture as much as possible of the second stage, and it succeeded from that perspective.

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If you watched the launch of Artemis-1 on a livestream or on NASA TV on cable television, I can assure you it was ten times better to see it in person. Seeing the launch and being able to share it with like-minded people was an experience unto itself, and is something that anyone interested in spaceflight ought to have in their own right at least once.

For Artemis-1, my wife and I were at a viewing spot that pretty much only locals know about, and were closer than pretty much anyone except those on base. We were many miles away, mind you, NASA makes sure that the general public is far away enough to be safe from the rocket should things go catastrophically awry. Still, we were able to see Artemis sitting on its launch pad in the distance, shining like a beacon in the night. Close enough.

The weather was great — thin clouds, the evening typically cool (around 72ºF) for a fall evening in Florida, with light winds and not many biting bugs. There were about one hundred or so other people there, and we all gathered onto a fishing pier that extends out into the Banana River. It was a party-like atmosphere, with people having a good time and in a good mood.

Everyone was keeping up with the launch on Internet streams from their phones, with many tuned into coverage on YouTube from Spaceflight Now. Others had NASA’s stream up, but it was far less popular than SFN because SFN’s commentator was pretty quiet unless he was relaying an announcement. While NASA did a great job with their coverage, it seemed at times that they got carried away with cheerleading and forgot that this was a news story too — something that deserved as much information as possible for those following the events online.

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SpaceX Starlink launch tonight. Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station occurred at 10:09PM local time on September 4th, 2022. This was SpaceX’s fortieth launch of the year. The first stage booster supporting this mission previously launched Arabsat-6A, STP-2, COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation FM2, KPLO, and two Starlink missions. In addition to the fifty-one Starlink satellites, Sherpa-LTC, an orbital transfer vehicle for customer Spaceflight Inc, a Seattle-based spacecraft developer was placed into orbit on a test mission for the company.

It was a pretty late summer night tonight, with thunderstorms to the northeast and southeast, and a nice breeze blowing off of the Indian River while we waited for liftoff. As is the usual case, we met some nice people who were seeing the first launch as well as some locals like us.

SpaceX Starlink, SLC-40, September 4, 2022
Photograph ©2002 by Charles Boyer and licensed under Creative Common 2.0
(click to enlarge)
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In its sixth mission for July and it’s thirty-third mission of the year, SpaceX launched 53 Starlink this morning from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Liftoff from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida occurred at 9:38 a.m. EDT (1338 GMT).

This was the eight flight of booster B1062.

A crowd gathered on Playalinda Beach on the Cape Canaveral National Seashore to watch Falcon 9 lift off on July 24, 2022.
(Click to enlarge ©2022 Charles Boyer)
Falcon 9 pierces the sky on its way to orbit, July 24, 2022
(Click to enlarge ©2022 Charles Boyer)
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After a scrubbed launch the day due to thunderstorms before, and one delayed this by a persistent storms, winds and a single anvil cloud directly over the launch pad, a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 7:15 p.m. EDT (2315 GMT), carrying two experimental satellites for the U.S. Space Force. Here’s a short sequence of the launch sequence that I made.

This video was made from the LC-39 gantry at Kennedy Space Center. At only 2.3 miles from the launch pad itself, the Gantry offers the best views of a launch that the public can get access to, and the sound from the rocket there is tremendously loud — all in all, it’s an exciting place to be for a rocket launch. This is a very representative view of what ticket holders there see with their own eyes.

I recommend clicking through and watching full-screen in YouTube in 4K or HD.

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While waiting out a long hold due to lazy thunderstorms that were lingering too close to SLC-41 to safely launch United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V set to carry the US Space Force’s payload designated as USSF-12, I grabbed a few interesting shots from the nearby launch pads.

Out at LC-39A, SpaceX is constructing its launch tower for future Starship missions.
(click for full res version)
@Charles Boyer, 2022 (CC BY 3.0 US)
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