I watched the launch from across the street from the house. One of the (few) benefits of living in south Florida.
8 thoughts on “Kepler Is Heading To Orbit”
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I watched the launch from across the street from the house. One of the (few) benefits of living in south Florida.
Comments are closed.
If you were still in SoCal, you could have watched NASA try to hit Antarctica with OCO instead.
“If you were still in SoCal, you could have watched NASA try to hit Antarctica with OCO instead.”
You misspelled “Orbital Sciences”. It was their Taurus LV that failed, not NASA’s OCO. But your post is a wonderful example of how NASA gets blamed whether it’s their fault or not.
Watched the launch on TV and it was beautiful, though I tuned in at the last minute and missed all of the commentary that precedes these events.
Does anyone know what was with the spinning of the vehicle just prior to the second stage separation?
This is a nice project. There should be more. We need all the incentive we can get to be out of this rock.
Ed Kyle’s launcher library says: “These solid motors [Star] are spun up on a second-stage-mounted spin table to add stability prior to release.”
“You misspelled “Orbital Sciences”. It was their Taurus LV that failed, not NASA’s OCO. But your post is a wonderful example of how NASA gets blamed whether it’s their fault or not.”
No misspelling here. Orbital did the deed, but NASA selected them as the LV contractor, and oversaw the integration. Point the finger where the buck stops. NASA paid for it. With our money. So, yah, they get the blame. Sucks to be them (and us, since they just pissed away a quarter of a billion hard-earned dollars).
A really bright engineer friend of mine once said: “The dumb ones point the finger at someone else, the smart ones point it at themselves”.
Thanks, Pete!
“So, yah, they get the blame.”
Fine, so long as you understand that with that attitude, NASA won’t be taking a lot of chances on startup launch companies in the future.