Roman Candle Lit

From last October. Rocket was lit, but not yet off the pad. Good shit.

Lift Off!

Not the best quality. It's times like these I wish I had a real camera and/or video camera. Oh well. You all get the idea.

This Delta II rocket, built by Boeing, launched the Phoenix and helped it on its way to Mars. It took off this morning at 5:26AM. That would be 2:26AM for you folks out on the west coast. I proceeded to go back to bed and fall asleep once the sound of the surf had drowned out the sound of the rocket.

Biggun'

Yes I took that picture. It was about a hundred yards away at the time.

Measat Launch

I'm a little late on posting this, but today at around 3PM PST the Boeing built Measat satellite will be launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome. The satellite will provide communications to a large swath of the asian continent. The launch will be televised via the entarwebs today. Check the countdown clock at the bottom of the page for the link to the webcast. They've got video links for both 56k and broadband. Check it out if you're feeling like it. I didn't work this project, but I have been within touching distance of this sucker and it's gonna be in space soon. Too cool!

Update: Well it's about 15 minutes after launch and all is well at this point. Here's to continued success on this launch. Go Proton! Go Breeze-M! Go Measat-3! Go Boeing!

Ground Control To Major Tom

Launch Update

Spaceway F2, a Boeing 702 satellite built by the Boeing Satellite Development Center for DIRECTV Inc., was successfully launched Wednesday from Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana. Spaceway F2 and another SDC-built satellite launched in April will support a capacity expansion for DIRECTV, allowing it to deliver more than 1,500 local and 150 national high-definition channels to dozens of the largest U.S. markets by 2007.

What Goes Up, Better Damn Well Stay Up

NEW UDATE: 15-NOV-2005, 4:54 PM -

The launch of Spaceway F2, a Boeing 702 satellite built for DIRECTV, Inc., from Kourou, French Guiana, has been rescheduled. It will be broadcast live Wednesday, Nov. 16. The launch window extends from 3:45 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Pacific time.

The launch will be broadcast live on IPTV . Subscribers to DIRECTV can watch on channel 399.

UPDATE: 3:43PM PST - The launch has been postponed due to a "problem encountered during final preparations".

So at 3:45PM PST today the Boeing built Spaceway satellite is scheduled to launch. It will be the latest of the Boeing 702 family to take up residence in earth's orbit. The image below is a what the sucker looks like. The reason I bring it up is that they will be broadcasting the launch on DirecTV channel 399 as well as on the Ariane Space website and watching a rocket launch is cool.