Blast Off Live: BBC Coverage of Soyuz launch.

[cantab]

Tomorrow, the 15th December, the Soyuz is scheduled to launch carrying Briton Tim Peake, American Tim Kopra, and Russian Yuri Malenchenko to the ISS.

Tim Peake is the first British astronaut to have been selected by ESA, and as such there's been plenty of interest in the British media.

BBC1 will be covering the launch from 10:30 am to 11:15 am - that's UK time of course - then later at 7:00 pm BBC2 will be covering the arrival of the Soyuz at the ISS.

Should be good to watch and boost interest in spaceflight in what I think has already been a good year for it

[ElWanderer]

Woo, I think that's the first launch I've watched live on TV since 1986  - we don't get that kind of coverage in the UK very often.

Cdr Chris Hadfield was great, though he did keep referring to solid boosters, then correcting himself. I could've sworn I heard him use an xkcd-style line, something like "[the boosters have ignited, but] they need to fire the central engine if they want to go to space today".

[PB666]

http://www.bbc.com/news/live/science-environment-34985274

For the past week or so the Beeb has been smattered with articles about Peake. Curiousity finally got the best of me, it turns out his 15 miuntes of fame is due to the fact that he's the first bonafida English national to go to space.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35102247
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35090412
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35086522
http://www.bbc.com/news/35041726
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35091324
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zyfb9qt
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35086524
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34991338
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34991336

Yep the Beeb sure knows how to spam news. But you will find a couple nice photos in there of the russian version of the tractor (i.e. train) carrying the space craft to the launchpad.

 

 

[cantab]

Coverage was OK, could have been better I think. It was a bit light on technical details, it felt a shame to not have reports of the speed and so on like you would on a NASA commentary. Meanwhile judging by my mum asking me questions (which I couldn't answer fully because I wanted to watch the TV), it wasn't all that good at explaining things to the non space geeks either.

[Glaran K'erman]

For future reference, watch it on NASA's YouTube channel. They stream their three NASA TV channels free of charge and live 24/7.
Much better commentary.

Edited December 15, 2015 by Glaran K'erman

[ElWanderer]

I'll admit I was annoyed there wasn't a Mission Elapsed Time clock. Guess that's what happens when you have no experience of covering such things. We also had the volume down low so it was hard to tell when to expect staging events.

YouTube isn't an option in our office, but we do have a TV in the kitchen...

[Elrond Cupboard]

34 minutes ago, PB666 said:

 

 his 15 miuntes of fame is due to the fact that he's the first bonafida English national to go to space.

 

 

 

Helen Sharman? I think TP is the first Brit to venture forth as an employed person, rather than a guest.

[PB666]

Yeah, under the employ of who im not sure, thinks its the esa.

[Glaran K'erman]

Yep Tim Peake is flying as an ESA astronaut.

 

[ElWanderer]

Until recently, the UK government didn't contribute funds to ESA's manned programme. So Brits have previously only got into space through commercial ventures (Helen Sharman) or via American nationality (e.g. Michael Foale was born a dual national and flew with NASA but there are others who emigrated to the US and changed nationality to be eligible for NASA).

[Steel]

3 hours ago, cantab said:

Coverage was OK, could have been better I think. It was a bit light on technical details, it felt a shame to not have reports of the speed and so on like you would on a NASA commentary. Meanwhile judging by my mum asking me questions (which I couldn't answer fully because I wanted to watch the TV), it wasn't all that good at explaining things to the non space geeks either.

To be fair, the coverage was aimed at getting small children in primary school behind the event an raising general awareness of a UK astronaut.

[lajoswinkler]

ISS view of Soyuz thrusting into orbit. I think this was last stage thrust.

Has anyone noticed how violent the rocket shook right before the liftoff?

[worir4]

Something went wrong on docking, they had to switch to manual docking. I am watching it on TV and they are about to open the Soyuz hatch. 

[GluttonyReaper]

Yeah, apparently there was an automatic abort during docking, so they had to do it manually. Been watching the BBC coverage for the past hour or so, which has Helen Sharman, funnily enough.

Edited December 15, 2015 by GluttonyReaper

[Leszek]

I just watched the video.  I noticed right before the boosters separated it looks like something else fell off / was jettisoned, any idea what that was?

Video I am watching of the launch.

[Ten Key]

I believe that was the escape tower.

[Leszek]

1 hour ago, Ten Key said:

I believe that was the escape tower.

Hmm, I thought that went off with the fairing but I now I think you are right.

[J.Random]

It seems that automated docking was aborted when the system caught some signal interference from Cygnus. Oops.

[WuphonsReach]

14 hours ago, J.Random said:

It seems that automated docking was aborted when the system caught some signal interference from Cygnus. Oops.

Ah? (chuckle)

I was watching the video replay later and saw the Soyuz moving in the wrong direction and figured something went wrong.  The RCS jets on the Soyz were very interesting to see - maybe KSP devs need to redo the RCS graphics effect.