Wait, this IS rocket science

Well, that was interesting... A trio of us took a short drive north of Boulder to join DigitalGlobe for the launch of their new "most agile" earth imaging satellite. They fed us lunch, gave us commemorative T-shirts and hats, and we watched the live video feed coming from Vandenberg AFB in California. The footage is now online(*): it's long but the good stuff takes place between about 20:00 (liftoff) and 24:30 (main engine cutoff). The rocket reached 12,000 mph 6 minutes after launch, and orbit 5 minutes later. Given the firm's terrible luck with launches in 1997 and 2001, a good bit of nervous laughter broke out at T minus 2 minutes when someone across the viewing room asked, "So regardless of the outcome here, do we get to keep the T-shirts?" But, everything went according to plan ... so far anyway.

(* Update Oct. 4 -- DigitalGlobe has now posted the good parts of the video in Flash format -- much more useful than the original Windows-only version. I'd embed that here but without its "home" Javascript environment, it starts up automatically -- lame.)