C
CalliArcale
Guest
Last night, I had the pleasure of watching the early morning liftoff of Soyuz TMA-6 (carrying the ISS Expedition 11 crew and guest cosmonaut Roberto Vittori, representing both Italy and ESA) while eating dinner. It was a lot of fun, although I confess to a little disappointment that they ran informative clips about the Expedition 10 and 11 crews while the gantries were being retracted. Although I found the clips fascinating, I kinda wanted to see the gantries fold back. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> Oh well; they had a good view of the umbillical towers retracting right before ignition. It was particularly neat to spot the four boosters tumbling away from the vehicle, sparkling in the sunlight. The plume was particularly visible on this launch, presumably because of the lighting conditions, and looked spectacular. My husband noted particularly the broad fan-shape produced by the second stage.<br /><br />Quick question -- I couldn't tell, but was the "accelerometer" for this Soyuz launch a stuffed camel? John Philips had his birthday yesterday, and the Kazakhs gave him a stuffed camel as a birthday present. I couldn't quite tell, but it kind of looked like the camel was dangling from a bungee in the Soyuz descent module. (For those who've never watched coverage of a Soyuz launch, they traditionally fasten some object of personal significance to a bungee tied onto the instrument panel. Sort of like fuzzy dice on the rearview mirror, only more functional, as they can glance at it to get an idea of how fast they are accelerating by how far the bungee is stretching.)<br /><br />In any case, a wonderful launch! Soyuz TMA-6 will dock at the ISS tomorrow and exchange crew responsibilities. Vittori will move his seatliner into Soyuz TMA-5, and after a week, he will return to Earth with the Expedition 10 crew (Leroy Chiao and Salizhan Sharipov).<br /><br />Expedition commander Sergei Krikalev now holds the Russian record for total number of spaceflights (six). <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em> -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>