Vandenberg AFB Missile Launches 129
Anonymous Coward writes "Hi All: My Space Archive web site covers the activities of Vandenberg AFB, a military and civilian spaceport on California's central coast. After several weeks of work, I have finished extensively revising and expanding the Viewing Vandenberg AFB Launches page on my site. I've been observing and photographing these launches for several years. Some are visible over much of the western U.S., but there is little information about them. As far as I know, this is the only article ever written on observing these launches. Regards, Brian Webb"
Hrmph (Score:5, Funny)
There's probably something in the PATRIOT ACT reguarding this.
Re:Hrmph (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hrmph (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it irresponsable? As he states, these launches are viewable over a huge area, theres no way they can keep this stuff secret. The US certainly monitors launches made by other countries, so why is a little bit of monitoring of its own launches so bad? Do they really deem themselves that far above the rest of the world?
You are correct: it is not secret. But it is sensitive.
It comes down to the argument of where does one draw the line of protecting secret versus sensitive information. Both can allow a third party to reach the same conclusion. For instance, take the first Gulf War. It was secret as to when the U.S. was going to attack. So that wasn't leaked. But newspapers remarked on how much take-out food was being delivered to the White House. This is sensitive information because a third party could do a traffic analysis and come to the conclusion that increased food deliveries means increased planning activity and therefore they're going to attack very soon.
Re:Hrmph (Score:4, Informative)
VAFB has published information on unclassified launches on their website [af.mil] already. All the website talks about is what places are good to watch said launches from, what to look for, what laucnhes look most impressive, and what to bring. This is sensitive how?
Or I guess you didn't RTFA.
Re:Hrmph (Score:4, Insightful)
VAFB has published information on unclassified launches on their website already. All the website talks about is what places are good to watch said launches from, what to look for, what laucnhes look most impressive, and what to bring. This is sensitive how?
So this makes things easier. Webb's sight tells us all the launches. Vandenberg tells us which were unclassified. A - B = C, which launches were classified.
Re:Hrmph (Score:3, Insightful)
The site linked just tells good public places to get a view of the launch from. That's all. There is a small launch schedule, that says:
This schedule is a composite of unclassified information approved for public release from government, industry, and other sources. It is essentially accurate at the time of publication, but may disagree with other launch schedules (including the official Vandenberg AFB schedule). This listing does not provide sensitive or potentially s
Re:Hrmph (Score:1, Flamebait)
Indeed. Just like kite flying should be illegal because it can give clues about wind that can help enemies aim artilery (should be "artillery"). Asking about and reporting on $4000 hammers is also sensitive, because it can let the enemy know we're buying hammers.
You're making a mistake of classification. You think it should be all one way or another, as evidence by your arguments on kites and hammers. Reporting on hammers purchased by the grounds crew of the Capitol building isn't sensitive. But pe
Re:Hrmph (Score:3, Insightful)
But when it's orbiting, the orbit can be observed. The satellite can be observed. Very good guesses can be made about the satellite.
In other words, you don't know what you're talking about. Even if he reports classified launches, there's no information that he is releasing that can't and isn't be figured out by observing the orbit.
And the pizza thing is apo
Re:Hrmph (Score:1)
Re:Hrmph (Score:1)
Re:Hrmph (Score:1)
Re:Hrmph (Score:2)
Re:Hrmph (Score:2)
Re:Hrmph (Score:3, Insightful)
Making a web site out of this will most probably attract some attention from the men in black and the guy will have to take it down.
Re:Cite chapter and verse please (Score:4, Insightful)
b. Go read the Patriot Act.
Nuff sed.
Re:Hrmph (Score:2)
Re:Hrmph (Score:2)
It's not like the launches are hard to photograph: the rockets can probably be seen for a hundred miles around as they shoot up into the sky.
Paranoia time? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Paranoia time? (Score:2, Funny)
Naw, he'll be too busy working on his tan...on the tarmac at Gitmo.
Re:Paranoia time? (Score:2, Flamebait)
I wonder if the author will find himself being tailed by suited guys in cars from now on....
He should. How many countries would want this data? Rhetorical question: everyone. So even if he has naive intentions, this needs to be investigated because of possible impacts.
Re:Paranoia time? (Score:2)
What good would this data due Iran? What good would it do North Korea? I went through the site and I just don't see how that data is going to be useful to anyone.
This data by itself may be not very useful at all. However, like problems of database security, its value lies in the ability to cross-reference. When combined with other sources of data it may reveal things such as the launch schedule of classified Air Force payloads. For instance, from this site we know when all these launches happened at
Re:Paranoia time? (Score:4, Insightful)
They look up. That's right, they can see the fricking satellite from their front yards. They can observe the orbit with their eyes, with cameras, and with radars.
You've posted a dozen messages on this forum claiming these guys are giving away secrets. They are not giving away anything that the bad guys can't see with their own eyes.
Jeez. Some people really don't have a clue at all. Read some satellite observing newsgroups sometime. They are filled with stories that go like this:
Man #1: Hey, I saw a new satellite last night. Don't know what it is, but I've observed it on two passes so far, and I have calculated some orbital elements. So, it looks like it was launched at 4:15 yesterday from Vandenberg, and it's in a 450x300 mile orbit, polar. Here's the orbital elements so you can find it: (gives elements)
Man #2: Thanks, I imaged the new sat last night, and it looks like it's a replacement for the Lacrosse that failed last week. Looks nice, got some photos of the solar arrays shining in the sun.
These people can figure out exactly what a payload is, where it was launched, when it was launched, and who owns it, without ever seeing a launch.
In short, you're a dummy.
Launches are cool but (Score:5, Interesting)
I spent a year working at Thiokol and they frequenlty test fired shuttle boosters and peacekeepers. Since the motor is strapped to a gigantic concrete slab it doesn't go anywhere.
From a half mile away the effect is impressive. First you see a bright light but there is no noise. When the sound hits you it feels like you have been hit. If there is tall grass it bends over as the shock wave approaches. Then the sound just does not let up. Like a deep tissue amssage for a minute.
Re:Launches are cool but (Score:1, Offtopic)
Ooooh! Sounds relaxing!
Re:Launches are cool but (Score:3, Funny)
From a half mile away the effect is impressive. First you see a bright light but there is no noise. When the sound hits you it feels like you have been hit. If there is tall grass it bends over as the shock wave approaches. Then the sound just does not let up. Like a deep tissue amssage for a minute.
As the hair cells in your cochlea cry out, "Help us! We're melting!!"
Re:Launches are cool but (Score:1)
I remember going out to watch test firings during the Solid Rocket Booster redesign. Very cool! They don't happen very often now. Thiokol is a shell of what it was before the Challenger disaster.
Re:Launches are cool but (Score:2)
bahahhaah.. (Score:5, Funny)
nice anonymity!
Re: bahahhaah.. (Score:2, Funny)
> "Anonymous Coward writes.."
Maybe he's just trying to prove to his courtship rival, Brian, that black helicopters really do exist.
in Further news (Score:5, Insightful)
Now for the weather....
Re:in Further news (Score:3, Funny)
Known, Vandenberg publishes schedules. (Score:5, Informative)
Some of the launches are published on-line from Vandenberg AFB [af.mil]. And there are hobby sites [socal-skylights.org] tracking them. Not new.
Re:Known, Vandenberg publishes schedules. (Score:1)
Re:Known, Vandenberg publishes schedules. (Score:2)
They rise about 30 degrees above the horizon, and the second-stage flameout and staging is easy to see. They leave beautiful aqua-marine colored contrails.
Re:Known, Vandenberg publishes schedules. (Score:2)
Re:Known, Vandenberg publishes schedules. (Score:2)
My name and office phone are listed on the schedule site, and I got deluged with calls... from the public, TV stations, and a UFO research organization. I
Aviation Week (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Aviation Week (Score:2)
There are regular ICBM launches from VAFB to test/train missile crews and to test the reliability of the ageing ICBMs in the USAF arsenal.
I imagine several countries would be curious to find out if our ICBMs are failing tests. A web site like this would certainly help them find out. This could also be an argument for maintaining a strategic bomber force, if only a token one.
Re:Aviation Week (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Aviation Week (Score:2)
haha, foriegn power already watch these tests, no great secret.
So then it's alright for Americans to watch and report on it for them? While Russia may have the satellite capability to watch Vandenberg I doubt, say, Uzbekistan does. They do, however, have Internet access. And now, thanks to the resourcefulness of one American, they know a lot more than they used to.
Re:Aviation Week (Score:1)
Does it matter if this woman is native american, russian, polish, or martian? Who says terrorists have to be 20somethings on a rather violent career path towards depravity.
Nobody needs internet access when grandma is living here.
The information is public anyway, and even if it wasnt, what exactly could you do if you knew a rocket was going to
Re:Aviation Week (Score:1)
http://www.vandenberg.af.mil/30sw/launches/launch_ videos.html [af.mil]
And they are allowing tours of the facility.
http://www.vandenberg.af.mil/30sw/newcomers/index. html#tour [af.mil]
Which incidentally, you need to confirm your details and supply SSID etc, so the parts that need protecting are being protected, the pretty light show is fully public.
Funny (Score:1, Redundant)
Re:Funny (Score:2, Funny)
(You can proceed to mod this lame joke down now)
Re:Funny (Score:1)
A Vivid Memory (Score:1, Interesting)
Not something you see every day!!
Da Gov'ment Ain't Gonna Like This (Score:1, Redundant)
FBI takes site offline in 3... 2... 1...
(...or was it just the Slashdot Effect?)
Re:Da Gov'ment Ain't Gonna Like This (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Da Gov'ment Ain't Gonna Like This (Score:3, Funny)
Thank you
Re:Da Gov'ment Ain't Gonna Like This (Score:1)
Can see launches from Phoenix, AZ (Score:3, Interesting)
quite a few of these launches.. can't actually
see the rocket, but you can see the aftermath.
Sometimes, depending on the lighting, you get a
lot of colors in the plume.
If you live in Phoenix and see strange looking
'clouds' that look like a snake due West, it's
probably a launch.
Used to see these from my backyard (Score:2, Interesting)
See you and raise (Score:2)
Good info, but not complete (Score:5, Informative)
I run the website that hosts the official base launch schedule (http://mocc.vandenberg.af.mil), and I've tried a number of times to get Public Affairs to compile - or allow me to compile - a list of these sites and related information, but I haven't had any luck so far. I get email from people all the time asking about this, and usually all I can do is direct them to Brian's page.
The commercial launch operators are usually pretty good about releasing information on launch schedules, payloads, and so on. The military is understandably more restrained, and you won't even see all of the military launches listed on the schedule. They are generally listed on a number of sites like Brian's, though.
Now, before anyone starts freaking out about classified information, it should be noted that even the classified launches have an unclassified launch window published. There's simply no way to keep such an operation secret. The real launch window, though, is often classified. For example, a launch might have a published 8-hour window, even though the real window could be a few minutes or less. (For the record, I don't deal with classified schedules. Even when I'm spending the night working launch support, I often don't know the exact launch time until I hear the countdown on the radio.)
If you're ever in the area for a Delta or Atlas launch especially, it's worth watching. Of course, they're even cooler to watch when they blow up. Liquid-fuelled rockets turn into huge fireballs, and solid-fuelled rockets fragment into thousands of little tiny shooting stars of burning fuel. And then they start thousands of little brush fires if they're low enough, which isn't so cool.
Re:Good info, but not complete (Score:3, Informative)
One of my favorite viewing sites is atop "Harris Grade" behind Vandenberg Village (it's open to the public). You not only get a great view of the launch but also get to hear the sound, which supplements the experience.
Re:Good info, but not complete (Score:2)
first? no (Score:3, Interesting)
I also remember seeing a lot of missles flying through the air. The best was when they would do a dusk launch of something that would seperate a stage.
I live there, watching the launches are fun (Score:3, Interesting)
The Missiles Are Not Effective? (Score:2)
Re:The Missiles Are Not Effective? (Score:2)
Re:The Missiles Are Not Effective? (Score:2)
As for ABMs themselves, to say they're ineffective against decoys broadbrushes the
Re:I live there, watching the launches are fun (Score:1)
Anonymous coward unmasked!! (Score:2, Redundant)
D'oh! I guess you're not very anonymous anymore, are you Brian?
I love that place! (Score:2)
JC (Score:2)
I grew up watching nukes blast off from VAFB (Score:4, Interesting)
Hope not.
What a scarry place. I think almost everybody I grew up with had a serious drug problem. The missles were very much related to the immense sense of doom among my childhood friends. An astonishing number of them died quite young despite the fact it's a fairly affluent area. There was just an enormous amount of self destruction.
Of course that really gloomy stuff didn't really emerge until the teen years. But I mean if you follow it back to the younger years you see the connection. I mean we'd talk about it openly, how we were all going to die anyway. We'd be out on the playground and at least once a week there would be this huge rumbling and then the trail of smoke that grew thicker and thicker as it dispersed into the atmosphere making crazy curves winding into the sky. It was quite pretty.
I recall once we had a misfire that sprayed rocket fuel all over an area between us and the base and it was a big hazmat emergency where everybody got paid overtime to pretend to be doing something. Other than that, nothing ever really came of the missles directly. But indirectly, it had an enormous impact on that community.
It's funny going back and seeing people spending a half million bucks to live there and thinking it's really great, especially the ones who sort of migrated in from the South or the Midwest. They're always really enthused about it. But those missles do leave an impression on you if you start off with it as a child. It sort of keeps mortality in your mind all the time. You have to grow up quick. After all, you might not be here tomorrow.
Re:I grew up watching nukes blast off from VAFB (Score:2)
oh, did i mention they watched them all from sacramento, even though it was over 400 miles from the test sight, she said it made the night sky glow when it went off.
I saw the IRAS launch from Pasadena (Score:3, Interesting)
If you look up Pasadena and Vandenburg on Yahoo Maps [yahoo.com] you'll see they are quite far apart, yet still we got an exciting view.
It was quite cool, not just because of the launch itself but because one of the project scientists was a Caltech professor who had recently given a talk on IRAS to one of my physics classes. We knew when it would launch, and knew all about what was being launched and what it would be expected to accomplish.
Also quite cool was that it was a night launch, so we saw this glowing dot rise up, accellerating, against the night sky, that was strikingly visible even against the glow of all of LA's light pollution.
In the summer of '85 I saw another launch, watching from Rosemead, near Pasadena. I don't recall what the project was called, but it was an atmospheric science experiment in which they launched a rocket into the ionosphere and blew up a bunch of sodium, blasting sodium vapor across a wide swath of the sky. The electrically excited sodium glowed a ghostly yellow in an expanding ball that slowly faded as it grew.
Re:I saw the IRAS launch from Pasadena (Score:1)
Ok, how come I'm getting visions of the blast from a shock rifle in UT?
Vandenberg launches are fun to watch (Score:5, Interesting)
I've seen the Delta II launch of both Ikonos and Gravity Probe B. Both of these were daylight launches, and would have been impossible to see if they didn't have extremely tight (and nicely publicized by Aviation Week) launch windows. If you know where to look, they're quite nice to see. The arc of the rocket as it bends over and smoothly accelerates to the south is math in motion, just beautiful.
I've also watched a couple of the Minuteman launches testing missle defense systems. Again, these were well publicized events. On my street in Calabasas for the last one, everybody was out in their lawn chairs waiting for it. It did not disappoint. Compared to a satellite launch, the Minuteman gets out of the atmosphere in a hurry, and the solid fuel exhaust blooms into a huge flower-shaped colorful cloud once it is in space.
Still, it's basically impossible for me to see the beauty in a Minuteman launch. It's a goddamn ICBM, its only purpose to kill millions of people.
Any you idiots picking on the maintainer of the site -- get real. Read the site, there is absolutely nothing there than any third-grader couldn't figure out with ten minutes, a road atlas and a blunt crayon. There are a few other good Vandenberg launch sites out there, too, like
this one [af.mil]
I've fantasized about burying a cellphone near Vandenberg, and set it up to call me when it feels the vibration of a launch. It'd be cool, cheap, and easy. Obviously the solar charger and antenna would have to be above ground. The problem with most Vandenberg launches is that you don't know when they are going to happen -- but if you knew they were firing you could just step outside and see.
Thad Beier
Don't *DO* that! (Score:2)
I read that headline, thought it was a man-on-the-ground eyewitness report, and wondered: a missile's just been launched, pointed where?
b&
JAG (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:JAG (Score:2)
launch?! WTF!!!! oh, right (Score:1)
Bad OpSec (Score:1)
Granted, But Nothing To Be Done (Score:2)
Re:Bad OpSec (Score:1)
Rockets and Liberty (Score:2)
God, what I wouldn't give for the ol
an apt qotd from slashdot (Score:1)
See the launch sites. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:See the launch sites. (Score:1)
I've been there, and have often been amazed to think of the amount of money that went into creating that huge shuttle-launch complex which in the end was entirely useless, and probably always will be.
What about the Titan IV? (Score:2)
Very cool post!. But you do not mention the vehicle and (secret) missions of greatest interest: those launched by the Titan IVA-B. They are launched out of Vandenberg at the rate of 1 or 2 a year. They typically launch huge spacecraft into polar orbits. With the big solid boosters and the ability of the core stage to yaw radically it must put on quite a show.
Re:What about the Titan IV? (Score:1)
Regards,
Brian W.
I live near this base (Score:2)
why you don't much info about launches (Score:1, Informative)