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Same old stuff, kind of...
Jun. 26th, 2013 11:37 pmMy end client realized, a couple of days ago, that social events had not so much been relegated to the back burner as not even put anywhere near the stove (if I may abuse a metaphor), so a barbecue was arranged for yesterday evening.
Accommodations have expanded somewhat since the last time I was here. In addition to the Fili, Polyot, and Kometa hotels I was familiar with from previous campaigns (named after a neighborhood in Moscow, the word "Flight," and the word "Comet"), a hotel named "Cosmos" has been put into service.
The Cosmos came about as a result of renovating the building that stood next to the Fili, and the result is handsome-looking. There are green areas in front of both the Cosmos and Fili, and gazebo-like structures in both areas that were constructed just for events like barbeques.
Besides the barbecue, there was a launch planned for last night. Not our launch, of course, which is still over three weeks away, but that of a Resurs-P1 satellite for the Russian government, aboard a Soyuz launch vehicle.
The folks that wanted to attend the launch boarded the bus at around 8:40 pm, which got us to the launch site, over at pad complex 31, in plenty of time for us to wait around for nearly two hours before liftoff. According to Google Earth, from our vantage point we were a little over 2.5 km (1.6 mi) from the launch pad. Had we attempted to cut our arrival any closer, there was a chance the traffic controllers working the roads around the launch site would've halted us somewhere rather more distant from the launch pad.
Russian launch procedures involve a countdown, just as U.S. procedures do, but there's no emphasis, no attempt, during the final seconds, to count backward out loud, along the lines of 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... Ignition!... Liftoff! Nor is there any kind of clock you can look at, as I recall being the case at the viewing area at KSC. You have to be listening to the control room exchanges from operator "one" (other operators are assigned other numbers) that are piped out to the viewing area, allowing the spectators to eavesdrop on the proceedings. The effect sounds very much like the public-address-like announcements that sounded so hokey in any Bond movie involving missiles (Dr. No and You Only Live Twice come to mind... "Astronauts, report to dressing rooms!").
In any event, I managed to get my Bloggie into the recording mode just as I heard "Пуск!" ("Ignition!") from the loudspeaker.
Attempting to photograph or video a night launch is, basically, a waste of time (but I do it anyway, go figure). What you end up with is a frame with a bright light inside the borders, unless the shot is taken close to the ground. I extracted the image below from the video I took.
After about 60 seconds of flight, the rocket entered a cloud layer that hadn't been there two hours earlier, and disappeared. Folks back at our hotel complex who didn't attend the launch said they were treated to an impressive plume display as the rocket gained altitude and entered sunlight (we are fairly up north, and the solstice was just a couple of days ago).
More later...
Accommodations have expanded somewhat since the last time I was here. In addition to the Fili, Polyot, and Kometa hotels I was familiar with from previous campaigns (named after a neighborhood in Moscow, the word "Flight," and the word "Comet"), a hotel named "Cosmos" has been put into service.
The Cosmos came about as a result of renovating the building that stood next to the Fili, and the result is handsome-looking. There are green areas in front of both the Cosmos and Fili, and gazebo-like structures in both areas that were constructed just for events like barbeques.
Besides the barbecue, there was a launch planned for last night. Not our launch, of course, which is still over three weeks away, but that of a Resurs-P1 satellite for the Russian government, aboard a Soyuz launch vehicle.
The folks that wanted to attend the launch boarded the bus at around 8:40 pm, which got us to the launch site, over at pad complex 31, in plenty of time for us to wait around for nearly two hours before liftoff. According to Google Earth, from our vantage point we were a little over 2.5 km (1.6 mi) from the launch pad. Had we attempted to cut our arrival any closer, there was a chance the traffic controllers working the roads around the launch site would've halted us somewhere rather more distant from the launch pad.
Russian launch procedures involve a countdown, just as U.S. procedures do, but there's no emphasis, no attempt, during the final seconds, to count backward out loud, along the lines of 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... Ignition!... Liftoff! Nor is there any kind of clock you can look at, as I recall being the case at the viewing area at KSC. You have to be listening to the control room exchanges from operator "one" (other operators are assigned other numbers) that are piped out to the viewing area, allowing the spectators to eavesdrop on the proceedings. The effect sounds very much like the public-address-like announcements that sounded so hokey in any Bond movie involving missiles (Dr. No and You Only Live Twice come to mind... "Astronauts, report to dressing rooms!").
In any event, I managed to get my Bloggie into the recording mode just as I heard "Пуск!" ("Ignition!") from the loudspeaker.
Attempting to photograph or video a night launch is, basically, a waste of time (but I do it anyway, go figure). What you end up with is a frame with a bright light inside the borders, unless the shot is taken close to the ground. I extracted the image below from the video I took.
After about 60 seconds of flight, the rocket entered a cloud layer that hadn't been there two hours earlier, and disappeared. Folks back at our hotel complex who didn't attend the launch said they were treated to an impressive plume display as the rocket gained altitude and entered sunlight (we are fairly up north, and the solstice was just a couple of days ago).
More later...
