Anonymous
By SpaceX
On Friday, April 14 at 11:48 p.m. PT, Falcon 9 launched Transporter-7, SpaceX’s seventh dedicated smallsat rideshare program mission, from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
This was the tenth launch and landing of this Falcon 9 stage booster, which previously supported the launch of Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, DART, and seven Starlink missions.
On board this flight were 51 spacecraft, including CubeSats, MicroSats, hosted payloads and orbital transfer vehicles.
Photo: SpaceX
I’ve lived here over 50 years, it only in recent years picked up to this constant pace. It is part of why I will be moving away in this next year, I don’t like it. Yup, to each his own.
I wish that they would be more considerate of the times that they launch. For us neighbors in SB, it feels like an earthquake so I can only imagine what it is like to live closer to it. Midnight launches are disruptive to sleep, especially when it scares animals that have trouble calming down for hours afterwards.
Launch times are dictated by the orbital requirements to put the satellites into specific orbits. Times aren’t arbitrarily picked.
Launching in the middle of the night and scaring nearby residents is probably not the only option.
So, we now rest assured that you have no concept of orbital mechanics or the economics of launches.
We live next to the largest space force base in the USA. 16 different launch facilities. Kinda comes with the territory sand;)
The upper stage from this launch vented unused fuel when it was far north, and there are some great images of a spiral blue glow of the fuel cloud embedded in a green auroral display at spaceweather.com
LEO RP-1 effects? Anyone know what the possible risks associated with kerosene & other ingredients of RP-1 rocket fuel might be in Low Earth Orbit? The cool looking spiral “galaxy” created amid AK’s northern lights from Friday’s VAFB SpaceX launch got me pondering that question. There must be quite a bit of raw RP-1 and its combustion residue from the troposphere all the way up to the exosphere and beyond, with different short and long term effects at each level. The massive increase in global launches in recent years went into overdrive with the reusable SpaceX F-9 rockets and especially the Starlink program’s massive launch numbers. If you haven’t seen an article on the “galaxy” w/photo copy and paste this into a search: northern-lights-spiral (or you can use “Blue spiral appears” with quotes). The full link to an article is – https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/18/northern-lights-spiral-alaska-night-sky-blue-light-spirals-spacex-rocket-fuel
There’s a problem with particulates from solid rocket booster combustion residue, mainly from perchlorates, affecting the upper atmosphere. I would imagine the fine carbon soot that may result from RP-1 combustion would have some effect, also.
There are articles at spaceweather.com linking the particulates to increased occurrence of noctilucent clouds.
btw, have you seen the cool wiki animation? – https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Comparison_satellite_navigation_orbits.svg