The webcasts for the past three launches out of Vandenberg California haven’t gone live until Falcon 9 is well away from the pad. Any guesses as to why SpaceX is suddenly reluctant to show us the pad and surrounding area?
The webcasts for the past three launches out of Vandenberg California haven’t gone live until Falcon 9 is well away from the pad. Any guesses as to why SpaceX is suddenly reluctant to show us the pad and surrounding area?
It’s weird. For one webcast, they started it while Kate Tice was already mid-sentence with the commentary, so they had obviously planned to have coverage. It seems like SpaceX just forgetting to hit the “go live” button seems most likely at this point.
Harry Stranger compiled some satellite imagery, and there is no notable activity at Vandenberg:
https://bsky.app/profile/spacefromspace.com/post/3ld5hexi6lk2y
https://bsky.app/profile/spacefromspace.com/post/3ld5hf4uib22y
https://bsky.app/profile/spacefromspace.com/post/3ld5hfcfma22y
Weird. I wonder if the possible CCP spying incident of 2024-11-30 is related.
If any of the late-starting webcasts happened prior to that date, perhaps Yinpiao Zhou noticed it and was innocently curious. Or perhaps he actually is a spy and his handlers noticed and ordered him to investigate. If not, perhaps some/all of the late-starting webcasts happened because of Zhou’s drone flight.
The first one was Starlink 9-13 on 2024-11-24 (PST).