STS-129 Shuttle Mission to the International Space Station Launches Monday 19:28 GMT
- Thread starter Cosimo
- Start date
self raising flower
Not flour, no?
Its a perfectly valid question, i obviously dont mean at liftoff, but for ages and ages before it there is loads of white smoke piling out of the bottom.
I believe its the sand/water suppression system, but am not sure.
There is a water suppression system which is turned on seconds before launch, but I think he may have been talking about the white smoke prior to that, and I'm guessing that's the LOx leaking out.
It's probably super-heated steam. Dumping several thousand gallons of water onto the pad at the point of ignition will do that. Could also be the LOx that's used to cool the engine bells (they'd melt if they weren't liquid cooled).
My stream recorder failed on all four of the NASA streams I usually collect, for the first time since STS-121. Got the BBC/Sky feeds though so it's not a total loss.
I think Yahoo! might have implemented a change in their stream management, which caught me out. That'll teach me to set up the streams at T-2 minutes.
