Why did they just show that one Camera 207, the long range tracker from Patrick AFB twice? Maybe they aren't paying attention that they already aired that entire replay just a few minutes ago. And why was it zoomed in so friggin tight at liftoff that all you cold see was the SRB/ ET nose cones until more than 1 minute into flight? What is to be gained from that? They have never done that before that I recall.
Ctd PAO : Ten seconds. We have 'go' for main engine start. Seven. Six.Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Booster ignition and lift-off ofShuttle Discovery. [...] Best of luck to the International Space Station'snewest laboratory.CDR : Houston-Discovery, roll program.Houston : Roger roll, Discovery!Asc PAO : Houston now controlling the flight of Discovery,a man-made rising sun on behalf of Japan.Discovery on the proper alingment, head's down, wings level, for the eight and a half minutes ride to orbit.Four and a half milion pounds of hardware and humans ticking aim on the International Space Station.36 seconds into the flight, the three liquid-fueled main engines now throttling back to 72% of rated performance going in the bucket,reducing the stress on the shuttle as it's go supersonic.Discovery already 4 miles in altitude, 8 and a half miles downrange, travelling almost a thousand miles on hour.Houston : Discovery-Houston, go at throttle up!CDR : Thank you.Go at throttle up.Asc PAO :Throttle up call aknowledged by commander Mark Kelly, joined at the flight deck by pilot Ken Ham, FD Ron Garan and MS Keren Nyberg. Down at the middeck are Mike Fossum, Aki Hoshide and Greg Chamitoff, heading for a half-year on the International Space Station.One minute 45 seconds into the flight. Discovery's 22 miles in altitude,23 miles downrange, standing-by for solid rocket boosters separation.Booster officer confirms staging, a good solid rocket boosters separation.
Well, first of all I think Mark called him 'Jim.' He then said something in Japanese and ended with a sort of 'we're going to light up the sky' kind of thing. I realize this is the most horrible description of a quotation ever, but I don't have his exact statement. This gives you the gist of it for the time being at least, until someone else can transcribe it.
Did anyone get the in cockpit video of the launch. Saw some pictures but can't find the video
Regarding how tight the image is at lift off, those long range cameras are on fixed focal length lenses, there is no zoom factor involved. Here are some links you can check out if it interest you, they are dated pre-rtf but they still show the different trackers used. This first one shows good pic of the telescopes used on 207, top film, lower video according to the caption [/url]http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/nasafact/pdf/LaunchImagery06.pdf[/url]On the long range optical trackers. There is so much thermal noise in images at ground level that they the images usually do not start looking good until a little bit into flight when there is not so much atmosphere at the surface to view through.Hope this helps to explain why that view is so tight at lift off, but so much more of the vehicle later in flight
