Long March 4B launches in 3 hours

[Kryten]

Launch is from the Taiyuan launch centre in northern China, carrying the Chinese-Brazilian CBERS-4 satellite for Brazil. CBERS-4 is an earth observation satellite intended to measure environmental conditions and changes in Brazilian territory (e.g. deforestation in the Amazon), and is a replacement for the identical CBERS-3 lost in a launch failure last year. The launch is to be streamed by INPE (the Brazilian space agency) here; note the stream will only, as far as I can tell, work on internet explorer.

Launch time is to be 3:23 UCT/GMT.

[Kryten]

Stream is now live, showing countdown rather than looped video. Should have video soon. About twenty minutes to go.

[GigaG]

The launch time is 3:26 UTC, right? Anyways, somebody should record this obscure launch with a screen recorder. I'm not sure if I can reliably do so on the first and only try (fullscreen issues with screen recorders, etc.) Whether this launch succeeds or (God forbid) fails, I'm guessing there won't be much video of it released - China is fairly secretive, and I don't know much about Brazil's space program's online presence.

Anyways, I have the stream running in Chrome with the VLC Media Player plugin. IE doesn't work for me with Windows Media Player, at least on Windows 8. (I have one of the newer versions of IE, IDK which one.)

The audio sounds jumbled when they talk. It was clear for a bit and now sounds all jumbled. You can tell that somebody is talking.

[Kryten]

Livestreams are rare, but China release video and images of most launches, including the failed CBERS-3 attempt. The CBERS program tends to get a lot of coverage in Brazil, and the site's already been knocked down by traffic once.

[Leszek]

10 Minutes, I have garbled sound too but I don't think it will be an issue. I don't speak either language and I don't think the broadcast will be in English.

[Dodgey]

I don't have a plugin to display that content So please do record this launch.

[Kryten]

You need to use internet explorer, or it won't work. ISRO have the same issue with their streams.

[Leszek]

I am going to give it a try, but it will be my first time. So anyone else who can and is so inclined should.

[GigaG]

It seems to be an animation... showing the wrong type of Long March nonetheless.

[Leszek]

It is just an animation it looks like.

[GigaG]

It has a "sequence of events" to the left side... don't know if that's live or prerecorded and timed.

[Kryten]

I think I speak for us all when I say; what the f*** was that.

[GigaG]

Double post (EDIT - or not) for reasons of unrelated topic - they just showed booster jettison despite the fact that this rocket actually has no strap-on boosters AFAIK.

Edited December 7, 2014 by GigaG

[GigaG]

Double post for update - Animation of core stage jettison (really first stage jettison, no boosters IRL) - the animation seems to be the wrong kind of rocket, but the event sequence matched up with the fairing so it might be synced. But is the event sequence for this rocket or the other variant of Long March in the animation? I can't read the text - it is probably Portugese which I don't know and the video is lower quality and barely legible at all - so I don't know if there are any references to boosters.

[Leszek]

Well if the ESA showed us the right way to stream a launch, this would be the wrong way. NASA's suddenly looks pretty good.

[Kryten]

Double post for update - Animation of core stage jettison (really first stage jettison, no boosters IRL) - the animation seems to be the wrong kind of rocket, but the event sequence matched up with the fairing so it might be synced. But is the event sequence for this rocket or the other variant of Long March in the animation?

The booster nosecones and overall shape don't match any flying model; it appears to a CZ-5, which isn't even supposed to fly until 2016. I'm curious to see what'll be revealed when the fairing pops off; Chang'e 5? The modular station core?

[GigaG]

The fairing popped off a while ago in the animation and seems to show some sort of satellite.

[Kryten]

I hope somebody was recording that. It will go down in history as the worst stream ever broadcast.

[Leszek]

I hope somebody was recording that. It will go down in history as the worst stream ever broadcast.

I stopped, waste of HDD space. There is no way I am going to post that to my Youtube.

[Lohan2008]

deleted 10chrs

Edited December 7, 2014 by Lohan2008

[Kryten]

Confirmation from the Chinese side that CBERS has entered orbit, exactly as we didn't have last time. INAE declared success without the proper data, and ended up eating a lot of humble pie.

[Scotius]

Hehe. Looks like i gained couple of hours of good sleep - and lost only couple of moments of "what the huh?" Learn from yesterday's Ariane launch, China - that's how a stream should look in XXI century.