First satellite to be launched from European soil leaves Cornwall tonight In what is believed to be the first satellite launch from Western European soil, a hefty Boeing 747 is set to take to the skies from a regional airport on Cornwall's north coast tonight and deliver a payload capable of climbing into orbit. US firm Virgin Orbit – founded by Brit entrepreneur Richard Branson – expects to see the …
As someone that has lived down them there parts I can highly recommend the stuff with no label that you have to ask the shopkeeper for or it's tucked away on a bottom shelf somewhere. The pasties are great if you avoid the Greggs style Cornish pasty company. Don't get me wrong those are quite nice but there are much better ones available.
Indeed, French Guiana is part of the EU….in some ways. Pop quiz: why does Ariane launch from French Guiana? If you gave the answer “because it’s on the equator which adds some helpful orbital velocity”, you’d be…..wrong. While that’s technically true, it’s really not the main reason.
The main reason is that French Guiana, enough though it is part of France, and part of the EU, has a derogation opt-out from the EU VAT system. There is still something called “dock dues”, but the net is that Ariane avoids charging its customers nearly 20% VAT on the launch service, making it a *lot* cheaper and therefore more competitive internationally.
If you have to go to Kourou to sort something out on a launch, as I did once, this makes the process of claiming back expenses particularly hellish. Trying to file an expense that is “in France” without VAT receipt, triggers a delightful couple of months of corporate computer-says-no.
I like a good bit of pedantry as much as the next man, but actually (or should that be 'so, actually'?) it is taking off from European soil: the last bit of soil it leaves before orbit is (hopefully) Cornwall. The rocket part of the system may not be leaving European soil under its own power, but then it's not leaving any soil under its own power. (Shades of Maia and Mercury).
It's not soil amendments that the folks in charge of the RDPs live for, rather it's rule amendments. So I rather suspect that the answer would be a highly qualified "yes" ... with no actual way to meet the qualifications. But they'll spend YEARS working on it. Taxpayer money isn't going to spend itself!
Nah. Not enough ocean going tugs to tow the island away from the European continental shelf, not to mention the lack of miners to dig the island free of it's foundations. And anyway, the Scots would be mightily pissed off!
Wake me when someone flies something like the Moon shuttle from 'UFO'. https://catacombs.space1999.net/plus/dt/ufo/ufo_lunarmodule.jpg. I'm sure that Branson would just love to be able to order "Interceptors, immediate launch!" whenever Musk or Bezos put something into orbit. Or maybe get SkyDiver into position...
Note: on rewatching the series, I noticed something which flew right past me back when I first saw it: all of the characters were massive tobacco and/or alcohol addicts. The Big Boss had an actual dispenser in his office, like one of those new Coke thingies, loaded with every variety of alcohol you could want. He didn't drink himself, but smoked more than a Russian aircraft carrier. Commander Straker was supposed to be US Air Force, but he really liked his Cuban cigars.
Goonhilly was built to receive the first transatlantic satellite signals from Telstar. Both the famous TV signals, and more run of the mill telephone calls. Long before Nasa headed for the Moon or the Beatles had even made it big.
Cornwall also hosted Marconis first transatlantic wireless connection, from Poldhu point, not too far from Goonhilly, just 60 odd years earlier.
That's what I saw too. The gimbal feedback was all over the place at one point, and the altitude dropped steadily from 500k feet to 244k feet before everything froze.
My guess (and it's only that) is the fairing over the payload did not properly release and the second stage + payload was off balance.
A former lecturer of mine at college in the 1980s once told me that the very first US to UK transmission involved a US generator and a US TV set hooked up to the incoming signal, and a UK TV camera pointed at said TV set, whose brightness was fully turned up to get enough persistence on the phosphors for the camera to even /see/ anything.
I believe he had been a GPO engineer during the period.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
