Thursday, February 22, 2018

SpaceX Falcon9 Launch from Vandenberg Visible from Northern California

Even though it's 300 air miles from my house to the launch pad at Vandenberg, I knew it would be quite visible - first, because in the pre-dawn twilight, the exhaust plume would be illuminated by the sun; and second, to be visible above the horizon at that distance you only need to be 18.5 km in the air, which an orbital rocket covers in a short period on the order of a minute. Sure enough at 6:18 Pacific Time I saw it. In the pictures below you can quite clearly see that the first stage has burned out and the second stage has ignited.





I was amazed at how quickly it appeared to be moving especially at this distance, but I didn't take video. Fortunately, Reddit user tKMagus did, from a plane as they were landing at LAX (about a hundred air miles, 3x closer):