Ted the Penguin

Space launches are amazing

Have I told anyone that I love watching stuff launch into space? A few weeks ago I was driving down to St. Mary’s to pick up my girlfriend, and right after I got off the Washington D.C. beltway I saw a contrail in the sky ahead of me.

I obviously didn’t take the picture, stolen from Steve Earley and the Virginian-Pilot, but you get the idea. An article on the launch is here, and a local resident, who got up early with her kids to see it, has a blog post about it here, complete with video and a few more pictures.

Interesting notes about the launch:

• From the NASA Flight Facility on Wallops Island, VA; first launch ever there.
• 69 foot, 4 stage, Air Force Minotaur I rocket
• Launched at 7 a.m. EST, December 16th, 2006.
• Payload was an Air Force recon satellite, code named TacSat-2.

It was amazing to watch, even if at the time I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. I knew it wasn’t a plane from the angle and look of the contrail, but didn’t occur to me at the time that it was a rocket.

Regardless, really cool.