Sentinel-6
5 December 2020
Sierra, Beverly and I drove for four hours down to Lompoc to watch SpaceX launch the Sentinel-6 satellite for NASA. This was Beverly's first launch and she enjoyed it. She's growing up in a world where it's normal for rockets to land after they take off. Here's the video:
The Lompoc Police Department delivered a pretty poor performance for this launch. They put up a roadblock 10 km away from the launch pad. Then an hour before the launch, they demanded that the hundreds of cars parked on the shoulder of the road clear out. So we all pulled back and spilled onto a farm road. Half an hour later the police demanded that we all clear out of the farm road. There was an instant traffic jam. And in the confusion, late-comers filled up the road that the police had just cleared. Eventually the police gave up, and let us watch the launch. I was as though they had no experience with this sort of event -- which is baffling since Vandenberg has been an active launch complex since the 1950s.
