I got photos of the SpaceX Iridium 4 launch tonight from Vandenberg AFB in Lompoc, California. These were taken from my driveway in Bakersfield, CA. I had half the neighborhood out watching.





This last one shows the booster dropping away

That’s amazing. If one doesn’t get a thrill from the spaceX program I don’t think they are alive. They, blue origin and scaled composites are doing some incredible stuff. Lucky you got to see it.

October 4 2004 was quite a day....

What makes the giant teardrop shape?

quote:

Originally posted by 16Bore:
October 4 2004 was quite a day....

Yep, right here in Kern County, California. We had a model of Space Ship 1 hanging from the ceiling of the Meadows Field (Bakersfield) airport terminal.

Mojave is less than 90 miles from Bakersfield, right next to Boron, where Butch makes the Searcy double rifles.

quote:

Originally posted by LongDistanceOperator:
What makes the giant teardrop shape?

In the last photo you can see the booster dropping away (the white dot on the right) so I assume that the teardrop is the exhaust gases from the booster separation expanding.

This was one of the best ones that I've ever seen and I grew up 5 miles from Vandenberg AFB in Lompoc, California. It was just after sundown here so the launch went up in the dark but when it got high enough the sun lit up the exhaust trail.

My wife and I were standing in a Burger King parking lot when we saw it. I wasn't sure what I was looking at, got a few cellphone pictures and later saw the internet reports. It was an otherworldly sight, crawling across the sky (a lot faster than it looked). I hope they do this more often...

quote:

Originally posted by TomP:
My wife and I were standing in a Burger King parking lot when we saw it. I wasn't sure what I was looking at, got a few cellphone pictures and later saw the internet reports. It was an otherworldly sight, crawling across the sky (a lot faster than it looked). I hope they do this more often...

I follow the Vandenberg AFB launch website and then put the dates of daytime and evening launches in my outlook calendar so I don't miss any.

You're so lucky, I'd love to see a launch of some sort. Keep hoping there might be something at White Sands Guided Missile Range, but they seem awfully hush-hush.

I have a friend who is an astronaut and I watched him do a night launch on the shuttle (STS 126). It was pretty cool. MsAZW flew to Kazakhstan to watch him launch on a Russian rocket; she said that was even cooler because she was closer than the NASA friend and family section.

Way back when, either Wednesday or Thursday nights were the WSMR launches.

We were camped out in a tent on the WS Park collecting dipodomys (sp) (Kangaroo Rat) and the world lit up in the middle of the night. Needless to say we were awakened.
Next morning we went in to the Park HQ and asked what happened . . .

They chuckled and said . . . oh yeah we should have told you they have a launch on ??? night.

They launched WSMR to Utah and Utah to WSMR.

As I remember the story, one of the more unique nscheuled launches was south bound, fell short and landed on what is now a famous Elk hunting ranch.

As the song says, . . .

"Those were the days my friend" . . .

SpaceX is launching a Falcon 9 rocket with a Spanish satellite from Vandenberg AFB (Central California) tomorrow morning at 0615.

I'll be outside watching it and I'll see if I can get some more photos.



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Postponed until Wednesday.



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