Delta II Rocket Launch from Vanderberg

September 6, 2008 Most rocket launches from Vandenberg are at night and are almost always on a weekday. This time the launch got delayed by a few days, so they rescheduled for a saturday during the day! We found out at about 4pm on friday, made plans in about 20 minutes, and set the plan in motion. We finally got to Lompoc around 11pm and found a motel. The next morning we got up around 8 and hit the road. I had stopped by Surf, CA on my way to San Francisco a few months before, and I knew it would make a great spot to view the launch from. It's only 3 miles south of the launch pad! Unfortunately, the rocket was only 3 miles north of the viewing area, and was on a southward trajectory. So before we even got close we ran into some Air Force guys who had the road blocked off. So much for that plan! Plan B involved a list of "recommended viewing areas". Two of them were north, which meant we'd be shooting into the sun, so those weren't inviting. The rest were about 30 miles away from the launch, which didn't sound very good either. So we decided to drive around Lompoc to see if we could find a road that went up into the hills. We found one at about 9:30am, up in the hills above the fog and about 8 miles south of the launch pad. About 30 minutes after we got there two white SUV's filled with air force guys pulled up, but they were just on their way to a facility and didn't give us any trouble. We had a pretty clear shot of where we thought the launch would be from, clear skies and no obstructions. We had our radios with us, but didn't know what frequency they might be transmitting in the clear on. The list from radioreference.com had a lot of frequencies, but none of them were being used. I got lucky and found the ocean traffic control freq, which they were giving countdown updates on. So we knew exactly when it would launch. We were taking bets on where it would first be seen, and we were all wrong. At about 90 seconds into the flight the four solid rocket boosters separated from the liquid fueled first stage at about 16 miles in altitude. The rocket continued south, reaching about 52 miles in altitude and about 9,000 miles per hour when we lost the ability to see it. The white plume was visible for quite a while after the launch. The rolling thunder from the rocket also reverberated for a while, but it was never loud from where we were. SpaceFlightNow has an excellent play-by-play of the official data. On the way back to Orange County we made some stops. First was the Cold Springs Bridge in Santa Barbara. Second was Knapp's Castle, a mansion built in 1940 that burned down in a forest fire.

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