What if I told you these weren't the coolest thing I saw. Like yes. Falcon heavy. twin booster landings. very important, very good.
but what if there was something i had literally never seen before in four years and countless launches and landings.
Not that these are bad pictures but let's just say the thing i saw was so exceptional that these by-all-rights spectacular sights aren't the ones i'll remember. (link to the follow-up post)
Anyhow, happy I stuck around where I was after work, sat there and ate my togo on the side of a road to get this view.
zoom in on this. open the full jpeg in a new tab and zoom in on it.
take it the hell in.
i got One picture of this and I had to blow the picture beyond all hell to show it, and it doesn't compare to what I saw.
Never. In all my years of living here, seeing launches, seeing landings, and never in all the years of anyone else i know, have we seen this.
Those are the shockwaves of the two returning side boosters as they plunged down to earth at supersonic speeds.
Everyone thinks they've seen a sonic boom, they've seen that picture of the fighter jet with the low pressure vapor cone. No. That's not it.
This is seeing a sonic boom. Two of them even.
But no. zoom in further. Look at the outermost ring. It's actually three rings. Did you know a falcon 9 produces three sonic booms? For years, nerds on the internet debated whether it was two or three, because at a majority of viewing distances the second and third booms had already merged into each other as the wavefront collapsed. Thats visual fucking proof of three.
Mythbusters cement truck explosion shockwave on the high speed ain't got nothing on this.
WE SAW THIS RADIATING THROUGH THE SKY AS THE SONIC BOOM LENSED THE DAMN CLOUDS.
I had a friend closer to the landing zone on base and he could look up and see the whole ass circle expanding outward in all directions, where we only saw this tangent arc of it for a fleeting moment against the clouds.
NEVER HAVE I OR ANYONE ELSE I KNOW WHO CHASES THESE SEEN THIS BEFORE.
