avatar by @citriccenobite
you can say "chimoora" instead of "cow of tailed snake" if you want. its a good pun.
i ramble about aerospace sometimes
I take rocket photos and you can see them @aWildLupi
I have a terminal case of bovine pungiform encephalopathy, the bovine puns are cowmpulsory
they/them/moo where "moo" stands in for "you" or where it's funny, like "how are moo today, Lupi?" or "dancing with mooself"
Bovigender (click flag for more info!)
I brewed a potion of good luck (Virginia variety) to see if that helps the RocketLab team on their first launch out of Wallops, which is currently in a hold waiting on upper level winds. They are halfway through their launch window for today, at this point.
Yes, the potion is a cheerwine float. It had to be Virginia style, since the Wallops Flight Facility is in Virginia.
NROL-61 may have been my first launch, but OSIRIS-REx was really where I got bit by the launch bug. We were going to Cocoa Beach over the Labor Day week, and I was really hoping to see the SpaceX launch that was supposed to go the night we arrived. It kinda... well, it blew up on the pad lmao. So that didn't happen.
I had considered this launch a bonus at the time, and I knew nothing about it until I went to the KSC Visitors' Center and they were having all sorts of outreach events to share how cool it was. Bill Nye was there on behalf of the Planetary Society, and he gave a whole speech! I remember very little about it.
But family sprung for the tickets so I could watch from the LC-39 Observation Gantry at the visitors center, which is JUST over 2¼ miles from this particular launchpad. Close enough that sometimes they cancel viewing opportunities from here depending on the wind.
It was an experience I still can't put into words very well, even after writing an article about it for a friend's launch viewing guide (now mine, after their passing). Good lord, looking back at it that article seems so... full of itself? I dunno. Self important? ah well. We're all still growing as people.
It was where this interest really took root, and without this experience I likely wouldn't be here today.
Don't worry, I won't have this much to say about every launch. For example, you can say very little of value about a Starlink launch except "oh boy, more atrocious, capitalist space glitter. This time I watched them launch it from x place, instead of y."
I've only really got a lot to say about the big deal ones, most of which came within my first ten launches before moving here.
Currently scheduled for 12:07 AM on November 14th, it's going to be a hell of a night!
I posted these on main (@lupi) before, but I should put them here proper on the photo account, especially now that I've learned the secret to getting them all to embed at the right sizes! That's cool! These were taken over the course of several months and several rollouts, but all came from the Canaveral National Seashore/Playalinda Beach. I'm torn on which is my favorite, the wildlife one gets points for bird and gator, but the first two landscape ones just really speak to me.
You can view them in full size (or order prints, if you're so inclined) on my gallery website!
After this, I think I'm gonna start actually posting my backlog in chronological order lmao.
i know y'all have seen these before but i'm still so happy with them
i think tomorrow i'll post a bundle from my first+second launches
i don't know why it's my favorite but i can guess why
it's an old marketing video made by the Trackmobile corporation advertising how their vehicles had replaced old Alco switchers for a very niche purpose in the aerospace industry and it's so much of a goofy thing
