Last Night Launch
Feb. 8th, 2010 01:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerWaking up today, I managed to look up a bit of news that I hadn't got waking up yesterday, that space shuttle Endeavour launched in the night with the Tranquility module (and its windows) on board. The day before, the weather had been good when I went to bed but got bad just before launch, but this time the weather had started off a little more uncertain but then improved. This was, I suppose, the last time I'll have to wait for the news in that way, as it's been pointed out in a number of different places that this is the last space shuttle launch scheduled for at night. (However, it's been pointed out a few times that if one of the remaining missions has to be rescheduled, it could wind up launching at night as well.)
While each successful launch is a bit of a relief to me, this one does come at a time of uncertainty and great angst with the budget for the development of the Constellation program being zeroed out. All of a sudden, the armchair engineers who used to make smug proclamations that the Ares I design was fundamentally unworkable and would shake itself apart on the way up seem very quiet; it almost seems a matter of them not being sure what to say right now even as new people getting to complain about something else. However, as the larger and more versatile rocket would have been a long way off anyway, I find myself starting to wonder about the potential uses of the "Falcon 9" rocket. SpaceX did eventually get the "Falcon 1" working, after all.
While each successful launch is a bit of a relief to me, this one does come at a time of uncertainty and great angst with the budget for the development of the Constellation program being zeroed out. All of a sudden, the armchair engineers who used to make smug proclamations that the Ares I design was fundamentally unworkable and would shake itself apart on the way up seem very quiet; it almost seems a matter of them not being sure what to say right now even as new people getting to complain about something else. However, as the larger and more versatile rocket would have been a long way off anyway, I find myself starting to wonder about the potential uses of the "Falcon 9" rocket. SpaceX did eventually get the "Falcon 1" working, after all.