(meteorobs) My house

[Jay Salsburg]

No, I did not see it nor did anyone else nearby. Since it was seen over Utah and at dusk, the altitude of the event was too low for us. White Sands Missile Range is 750 miles from my location. The contrail would have to have exceeded 150 miles or more in altitude to even break the horizon here, plus the fact that it was a relatively tiny rocket.

 

I have a history of Missile launch observations. In the early 1960s I lived near where I do now. I visited my Grandmother in Titusville, Florida, she worked for NASA at Cape Canaveral. This was the pre-Saturn days when the largest launch vehicle was the Titan III. I can remember from inside her house hearing a giant roar, running outside, a Titan III was ascending into the sunlight. It was well after sunset. The brilliance of the rocket motors and the sun on the contrail was remarkable, never mind the sound. Other than that, the memorable thing was, the Rocket went straight up, not curving over like you see today with rockets moving toward the horizon, but straight up; there was a separation of the solid-fuel boosters a few minutes after launch. I stood there getting neck strain for 45 minutes, yet the rocket was still going straight up for ,what must have been, thousands of miles.

 

I learned later that they (NASA) were trying to hit the moon by sheer acceleration without the computational baggage and long wait of “Launch-Coast-Burn,” it was the unsophisticated method called “Ballistic Transfer,” a brute force method like throwing a javelin at the Moon using long power burns for getting to the moon in the shortest possible time but striking the Moon at high speed. It seems the technology for Launch-Coast-Burn was not developed until later in the Decade for landing on the Moon.

 

Soon after that, back home in Shreveport, I would listen to the Radio broadcasts of launches from the Cape. One such launch was similar to the one I witnessed 25 miles away from the Cape, but now I was 900 miles from the Cape. You have to know that in the early 1960s, the light pollution we have now was nonexistent, it was dark even in the City. >From my front porch I had an unobstructed view of the Southeast. Listening to the Broadcast of the launch just moments later, I could see the light from the Rocket ascending into space early in the evening. Many who have heard this story are skeptical, but I assure you it is possible to see a large rocket ascending in a vertical climb from hundreds of miles away.

 

There are far more interesting stories I could tell of my time at Vandenberg, AFB, but I will save them for another time.

 

From: drtanuki  
Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2012 5:36 PM
To: Jay Salsburg
Subject: Re: My house

 


Jay,  Anyone catch this event?  http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865562314/Mysterious-streak-in-the-sky-was-missile-contrail.html 

 

Dirk

--- On Thu, 9/13/12, Jay Salsburg <jsalsburg at bellsouth.net> wrote:


From: Jay Salsburg <jsalsburg at bellsouth.net>
Subject: My house
To: "'drtanuki'" <>
Date: Thursday, September 13, 2012, 5:26 PM

	
 


Jay Salsburg


318 671-0009


salsburg.com <http://www.salsburg.com/> 

 

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