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Old 06-10-2020, 11:25 PM
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Default Electron launch: counting down now! (link)

The latest Rocket Lab Electron rocket is counting down to liftoff now (live coverage starts in about 20 minutes, see: https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/06/...-status-center/ ); propellant—LOX and RP-1 kerosene—is already being loaded into the first and second stage tanks.
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Old 06-11-2020, 01:36 AM
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Well hopefully the winds will be kinder to them on the next attempt. They got so close tonight.
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Old 06-11-2020, 01:53 AM
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Originally Posted by BEC
Well hopefully the winds will be kinder to them on the next attempt. They got so close tonight.
Their Mahia Point, NZ launch site suffers a lot of scrubs due to winds (their Wallops pad should do much better). I'm presuming that the winds they fear are surface and low-level ones, judging by how rapidly the LOX vapor kept getting blown away. If so, there may be a way to at least partially overcome that:

The nose battens on blimps (which also stiffen the nose of the envelope, and provide a loads-spreading means of attaching the mooring cone)--and on the nose of the DC-X / DC-XA / Clipper Graham SSTO VTOVL suborbital test rocket--serve to break up horizontal wind flow fields, which increases the wind speeds at which the vehicles can safely operate (they're like *external* slosh baffles, but for winds rather than internal liquid fuel). If Rocket Lab fitted the Electron vehicles with battens (which can extend as far down the airframe as desired [many blimps' battens, and the DC-X's battens, extended/extend pretty far back from the nose tip]; they can also double as conduits), they should be able to safely launch them in higher winds.
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Old 06-11-2020, 08:17 PM
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Rocket Lab may try again this Saturday. As the SpaceFlightNow live coverage page (see: https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/06/...-status-center/ ) says in its latest two updates:


06/11/2020 05:58
Stephen Clark Stephen Clark
With more high winds in the forecast Friday, Rocket Lab has scheduled the next launch attempt for its 12th Electron rocket mission for no earlier than 12:43 a.m. EDT (0443 GMT) Saturday from Mahia Peninsula on New Zealand's North Island.

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06/10/2020 22:35
Stephen Clark Stephen Clark
Rocket Lab has launch opportunities available through June 24. The company is expected to announce a date for the next launch attempt soon.
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Old 06-13-2020, 12:52 AM
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I got the email from Tim Dodd (Everyday Astronaut) about watching the Electron go and realized they meant Saturday in New Zealand (of course).

It got off without a hitch it looks like. The webcast ended right after the kick stage separated, so deployment of the satellites is yet to come.
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Old 06-14-2020, 08:26 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BEC
I got the email from Tim Dodd (Everyday Astronaut) about watching the Electron go and realized they meant Saturday in New Zealand (of course).

It got off without a hitch it looks like. The webcast ended right after the kick stage separated, so deployment of the satellites is yet to come.
Pegasus, at the behest of Zeus, made operating lightning-vulnerable implements--especially my computer--unwise until today...

Argh...that infernal International Date Line--I know it's necessary, but I wish they'd specified "Saturday ^where^"... (On Mars, there's no convenient ocean where Elon Musk and his Band of Merry Martians can "drown their unwanted days"; there will be streets, parks, and plazas where it will be Friday on one side, and Saturday on the other side.) Also:

I've only seen a Curie Kick Stage (carrying a few CubeSats for customers) in space *once*--and that was by chance, during an earlier mission--when it happened to appear in the field of view of Stage 2's "engine view" camera, as it slowly tumbled after its single Rutherford engine shut down (and the Kick Stage separated), after reaching the initial orbit, and:

This latest launch went perfectly; the only slight oddity (which didn't affect the outcome, or even present a potential problem) was that the video seemed to be continually buffered (although it didn't freeze, except for one or maybe two very brief instances). The visibly noticeable ascent events (Stage 1 shutdown, Stage 1/2 separation, Stage 2 ignition, Payload Fairing jettison, Battery Hot-Swap [immediately followed by jettison of the two spent battery packs], and Stage 2 shutdown) all occurred three seconds or so ^after^ the Launch Conductor announced "event X confirmed," immediately followed by applause. I've seen that happen *occasionally*--sporadically, for just a few seconds--during Electron, Falcon, Antares, Soyuz, and PSLV & GSLV launches (and Falcon Stage 1 and/or booster core landings, where the onboard camera video sometimes lagged the ground camera video slightly), but never during an entire ascent, as with this week's Electron launch.
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Old 06-14-2020, 11:23 PM
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That delay between sound and visual was there during the live stream as well. Odd, that.
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Old 06-15-2020, 12:06 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BEC
That delay between sound and visual was there during the live stream as well. Odd, that.
That's odd. Maybe they've switched to using lighter, cheaper, lower data-rate video equipment (ISRO uses such lower data-rate video gear aboard their PSLV and GSLV launch vehicles). Unless a rocket suffers a sudden, catastrophic failure, a slightly-delayed video stream doesn't result in the loss of any video (not even in terms of image resolution) that can be scrutinized later for engineering analysis purposes, nor does it make the live video un-watchable for video or audio quality reasons.
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http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6122050
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6126511
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