IP: The rocket's red glare

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> Date: Sat, 8 Jul 2000 21:11:13 -0700 (PDT)
> From: John Wharton <jwharton () netcom com>
> To: farber () cis upenn edu
> Subject: The rocket's red glare
>
> Dave--
>
>   [[My apologies in advance for the following rather lengthy and
>     self-indulgent techno-geek travelogue.  Some of your readers may
>     be amused, some not.  In any case, though, I should disclaim
>     that I am NOT a rocket scientist, so my speculation on booster
>     stage design and other assorted smart-assed cynicism should be
>     taken for whatever little it's worth.]]
>
>                      *   *   *   *   *   *  *
>
>
> Well, now THAT was interesting.  And the Fourth of July week, no less.
>
> All day Friday the media was abuzz, of course, with reports of last
> night's planned test of the proposed missile-defense system.  A modified
> Minuteman missile carrying a mock nuclear warhead was scheduled to be
> launched at 7:00pm Pacific time from Vandenberg Air Force Base.  Ten
> minutes later a second rocket would be launched from an island in the
> South Pacific, carrying a test interceptor "kill vehicle" that would
> maneuver to smash head-on into the warhead at 15,000 miles per hour.
>
> (Right.  "As simple as hitting one bullet with another," one critic
> explained, "except that missiles are a lot faster, can't be seen, and
> are surrounded by decoys.")
>
> (The press had been briefed that interceptor would have to be careful,
> of course, to NOT hit the "decoy" -- reportedly a single bright, shiny
> Mylar balloon deployed just in /front/ of the mock warhead.
>
> (Hm, let's see-- Two objects, one a big, bright, cold, radar-transparent
> Mylar balloon, the other a small, dark, warm, radar-dense mock warhead
> following right behind.  How could sensors possibly tell them apart?!?
>
> (One wonders, Was this Mylar balloon /really/ a "decoy"?  Or might it
> have been designed to be a giant "OVER HERE, STUPID!" navigation aid?)
>
> =====
>
> Anyway, at about 8:20 Friday night I heard a radio report that the test
> had been delayed by two hours.  At 7:00, of course, it was still
> daylight in Palo Alto.  But by 9:00 it would be getting pretty dark.
>
> I've heard that night-time satellite launches from Vandenberg have been
> seen as far north as San Jose -- 200 miles to its north -- in the form
> of a red glow on the horizon.  In the 45-plus minutes remaining before
> launch time, I figured, I could get myself at least as far south as
> Santa Cruz.  And the weather forecasts were for the sky to be clear.
>
> So I grabbed my trusty astronomical binoculars, hopped in the del Sol,
> and set off for the coast...
>
> (There was just a four-hour "launch window" during which the test had to
> take place, the radio said, so any delay past 11:00 would force the
> mission to be scrubbed.
>
> (Hm.  11:00pm here corresponds to dusk in the target area.  And,
> curiously, a January test launch likewise took place shortly before
> sunset, South Pacific time.  One wonders if the warhead/decoy detection
> system works best in the late afternoon, local time, when the target is
> in direct sunlight, but the sun itself is directly /behind/ the
> interceptor, so as not to blind its precision infrared sensors?  Nah.)
>
> (The two-hour delay, BTW, was needed to recharge telemetry batteries.
> For the U.S. to unilaterally break the 1972 ABM treaty is easy, of
> course.  The hard part will be persuading rogue nations to schedule all
> sneak attacks for just after dawn, Alaska time, and to always give us a
> two-hour head's-up.
>
> (And to properly configure their decoys, of course.)
>
> =====
>
> But back to the travelogue: My initial plan was to head for some bluffs
> on the Pacific coastline just north of the Santa Cruz boardwalk; figured
> they'd afford a good, clear southern view, all the way down to the
> horizon.  But driving down Highway 17, approaching Scott's Valley, the
> radio reported the countdown had resumed, with lift-off in just over 15
> minutes.  Which would not allow enough time to negotiate Santa Cruz city
> traffic.
>
> So when I hit Highway 1, I turned south, figuring the flat highway
> itself would provide some view of the horizon.  But it's hard to drive
> and gawk at the same time.
>
> So at T-minus three minutes I took an exit into Capitola, drove a few
> blocks off the highway, and pulled into a parking lot.  The lot was
> surrounded by trees and buildings, as it happened, so I dashed across
> the street to a fairly large shopping center parking lot and ran to a
> mostly-empty section of asphalt.
>
> By then I'd lost my bearings.  I looked up; the moon was in half-phase,
> so I followed its terminator backward to find the North Star.  Was
> surprised at how many airplanes were in the sky!
>
> Once I'd found true North, having studied a California map on the drive
> down, I turned and looked back in what I figured was the direction of
> Vandenberg.  Right above the trees I saw one airplane that seemed
> especially bright, as though I were looking at its landing lights.
>
> Thing is, the plane was /climbing/, not descending, at a most unnatural
> angle.  And the light seemed to have a slight pink-orange tint, and left
> a faint purple-pink line glowing in its path, a thin and much dimmer
> version of the ion trail left by the Shuttle during a nighttime reentry.
>
> By the time I got my binoculars up and focused, the moving light had
> started leaving a bright blue contrail.  Through the binoculars I could
> see two tiny white sparks falling away, right at the point where the
> contrail began.
>
> (Anybody know if Minuteman boosters use outrigger engines?  The two
> sparks meandering around made me think of the solid-fuel boosters
> falling away during a Shuttle launch.  Which would seem to be consistent
> with the contrail becoming visible at the same time, as the main engine
> -- or the second stage? -- throttled up its power.)
>
> The general path of the contrail was just below and parallel to the
> spine of the constellation Scorpius, climbing at an angle of maybe 25 or
> 30 degrees.  A few seconds later the contrail REALLY began blossoming
> outward, ballooning into a wispy-blue cloud that grew bigger and bigger.
>
> In time the cloud reached steady-state, collapsing in on itself in
> back at the same rate the front part was advancing.  It took the
> shape of a giant "spade" from a deck of cards, with an orange-white
> flare at the tip and a bulbous wake trailing behind, about the size of
> two fist-widths at arm's length.  A narrow contrail became the "shaft"
> of the spade, like a spear rising slowly in the night sky.
>
> =====
>
> It was at this stage that the rocket passed below and within maybe four
> moon-diameters of the half-moon.  A truly spectacular, absolutely once-
> in-a-lifetime scene, with the night sky itself a distinct deep blue (it
> wasn't fully dark yet), just a handful of stars visible, the bright
> half-moon, the feathery-blue rocket-cloud, an orange flame, and faint
> pink ion trail, all visible in the same small region of the sky.  All I
> could think was, If only I'd been able to grab some camera gear before
> hitting the road, and had time to set it up, well, that's the sort of
> juxtapositioning of images you don't often get a chance to record.
>
> At this point there was some commotion in the parking lot.  (Turns out I
> was standing there, gawking, right in the middle of a traffic lane.)
> "What are you looking at?"  "What IS that thing?!?"  "Good GOD!  Honey,
> come here!  Take a LOOK at That Thing!!!"  "WHAT IS IT?!?!?"  I shouted
> back that it was a rocket launch from Vandenberg for the missile-defense
> test they'd probably been hearing about.
>
> ("I thought it was a nebula!" one fellow said, ignoring the fact that
> nebulae are somewhat fainter to the naked eye.  Maybe he was thinking of
> those bright, once-a-century exploding SuperNebulas.  "But then I
> thought, 'Naw, it's moving too fast!'"  Which is, of course, true.
> Exploding SuperNebulae typically move much more slowly across the sky.)
>
>
> At that point there was a final, small burst of blue vapor at the tip of
> the cloud, and the spear-head seemed to freeze in place, while the
> orange flare continued on its path.  Second stage separation, I'd guess
> -- although I confess total ignorance to your typical ICBM flight
> profile.  Through the binoculars the microburst at the tip seemed to
> billow out in three directions, somewhat "club"-like, to stretch the
> card-suit metaphor.
>
> As the orange dot moved away from the blue cloud, I was able to follow
> it for just a short time longer.  By now it was quite a ways down range,
> and its apparent motion against the star field was much slower.  I
> lowered the binoculars to see if it was still visible to the naked eye
> -- it wasn't -- and after that, had trouble finding it again.  I did see
> something dim and orange through the binoculars, but couldn't be sure if
> it was moving.  Shortly after that, I gave up.
>
> Curiously, long after the down-range plume dissipated, a large cloud
> continued to glow a faint moon-lit blue, much lower down, near the start
> of the flight trajectory.  After maybe 15 minutes I stopped watching and
> crossed back to where I'd parked the car -- across a thoroughfare that
> turned out to be surprisingly more busy than I'd realized crossing it
> before.  Stopped at an all-night restaurant, had dinner, and drove home.
>
> By then, of course, the mission test had already failed.  Saturday's
> papers say the intercept "kill vehicle" failed to separate from its
> booster and fell harmlessly into the sea.  (Perhaps that should read
> "HARM"-lessly?  Geek puns -- Ug!  :-)
>
> =====
>
> Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish has been quoted as saying the failure
> of the interceptor to separate from its booster "wasn't even on [his]
> list" of potential mission concerns.
>
> Funny, isn't it, how in recent months the list keeps growing of failure
> modes that military/aerospace contractors neglected even to consider?
> "How was **I** supposed to know the dimensions were in English, not
> metric?!?"  "You mean mechanical assemblies vibrate /differently/ at
> zero-G than they do in the lab?!?"  "Nobody told **ME** to reset the
> microphone recorder subsystem before the rocket took off...!"  :-)
>
> Plus, according to CBS, the target vehicle also failed to deploy its
> decoy.  You'd have to be a true cynic to imagine an inspector telling
> one of the assembly technicians, "You see that blue wire there?  Now,
> when I turn around, you be sure NOT to clip it with these diagonal
> cutters, 'cause if you do, the decoy won't deploy, which would INCREASE
> our odds of getting government funding for more research -- ya' hear?"
>
> Assuming, of course, the decoy wasn't really meant to serve as a beacon.
>
>
> In any case the spin being put on this by the military is that the
> failure of the kill vehicle to separate from its booster rocket should
> not reflect badly on the test, since a totally different booster will be
> used when the system is finally deployed.  Oh.  (Sort of like, on the
> Mars missions, everything worked just fine up until when they crashed.)
>
> To which critics replied, "This is a humiliating failure for the program
> -- I mean, these guys couldn't even get the car out of the garage!"
>
> =====
>
> They say this "bungled" test launch cost American taxpayers $100
> million.  I figure my share was about 40 cents.  Certainly not money
> wasted as far as **I'M** concerned!  Not as much fun on a Friday night
> as having a date, maybe, but certainly a lot cheaper.
>
> I say, Bring on some rounds of testing!!!  Once a month, if they want.
> Any time my government wants to hurl $100 million into the California
> night sky, I'd be HAPPY to zip down to Capitola again and pay 40 cents
> to watch!
>
>   --John Wharton