Eric's Arcana and RiderX

Today my daughter and I took a kayak tour, paddled into the wind and against the tide for 45 minutes, and then, while we were resting, happened to see this…

That’s Atlantis rising from historic pad 39A through a 200mm lens from about 10 miles distant (click on image for full-size). The atmosphere was pretty hazy, so the quality isn’t what I had hoped for. The liftoff is a bit strange – all you see initially is some smoke from the main engines (which *only* generate about 1.5 million pounds of thrust), and not a lot of light because they are hydrogen-oxygen and burn clean. *Then* the solids light and throw off a ton of smoke and steam and a ton of light from the incandescent smoke.

A few seconds later, already heading northeast. A bit of explanation is required…

If you have a launch pad on the equator and launch directly east (always east because you get a boost from the earth’s rotation), you would get an orbit that is directly over the equator. If, however, you are in Florida (25 degrees north latitude), when you launch on the most efficient direction, you get an orbit that is inclined to the equator at 25 degrees – the spacecraft will range from 25 degrees north of the equator to 25 degrees south of the equator. This is known as the orbital inclination. Big heavy satellites – such as Hubble – are at this inclination.

To go to a lower inclination is pretty expensive in terms of energy, so this is to be avoided if at all possible. Conversely, it *is* possible (for a reduction in payload) to reach an orbit that is a higher inclination than the latitude of the launch site, all the way up to a polar orbit.

ISS is a joint project with the Russians (among others), and the Russian launch site at Baikonur is at a latitude of 45 degrees, so that’s the minimum inclination for that launch site. That would drop the booster stages on China, so the Russians launch a little more to the north, and ISS is at 51.6 degrees of inclination. The shuttle can hit this inclination for the a reduction of about 30% of payload. This is significant, which is why Columbia (the oldest and heaviest shuttle) didn’t go to ISS.

There are two advantages (to me) of the high inclination. First, it means that ISS travels far enough north on its orbital track to be visible from Seattle. And second, it meant that the track today was northeast, kindof in our direction, so we had better viewing.

This is about 50 seconds into the flight, and at 10 miles, just about the time the sound gets to us. The northeast track means the shuttle isn’t pointed to us and the wind is from the north, so the sound is mostly channeled to the south. We do get a lot of bass out of it, but the most distinctive part is the crackle that it makes. You’ll notice at this point its climbed out of the haze and into the clear sky. I’m pretty pleased that you can see it so well in this shot.

Emerging out of the clouds at around 90 seconds.

At about 120 seconds, 50,000 meters, and 2800 MPH, the solid rocket boosters detach. The 3 main engines make a great searchlight, but produce no smoke and therefore there is no smoke trail. The two dots to the right are the detached boosters.

Overall, it was pretty cool to do, and the vantage point was pretty good. I would have preferred to be on Kennedy, but spots at the 6-mile banana river location are virtually unobtainable, and ones at the Saturn 5 center are impossible for mortals to get.

I can’t say a lot about our guides, “A day away outfitters”. They had more people than they could really handle (53 people with 5 or 6 workers), and missed out on a lot of things that would have made it more memorable. And the husband and wife who own it argued about how they should be doing things in front of their guests.