Hi there, it's me, Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut.
And there's UFOs in southern California.
Well, actually these are identified flying objects because there is an exact explanation
for what this is and it's something I'm extremely excited about.
Let me show you and I can understand exactly why most of southern California was going
nuts for this, look at this.
Woah.
Yeah, if I saw that thing filling up the sky and I didn't know what it is...
I would say that was a alien abduction, UFO literally in the works.
But what it actually is, is to me, honestly almost more exciting than that.
That would be pretty exciting though.
But it's one of these, it's a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
This is Elon Musk's rocket company right there in Hawthorne California.
They were launching a Falcon 9 rocket out of Vandenberg Air Force Base and that's about
3 hours north, northwest of LA.
These are about, in real life these things are 220 feet tall, 70 meters tall.
They have 9 big ole massive Merlin engines on the first stage and what you're seeing
here on the footage is the separation of the first and second stage.
So after about two minutes and 40 seconds this first stage ends up burning up, or almost
out of fuel and then it turns around and it lights its engines but the second stage continues
off into space.
Now SpaceX has been landing these, but this is one of the first missions in a while that
SpaceX has not had margins, to, or a, they didn't end up wanting to land this one.
Because believe it or not, they actually have too many.
Um but I'm going to show you what this is, exactly was.
Here's the launch.
This happened at 5:27 pacific standard time out there in California.
And these things happen often.
These happen about every 2 to 3 weeks.
SpaceX is launching more than any other launch provider right now.
And it's really exciting stuff.
So again this a 220 foot tall rocket.
Um and it launched and it headed south out of Vandenberg Air Force Base here you can
see it lighting up and it lifts off with 1.7 million pounds of thrust.
This thing is incredible.
These are amazing rockets, um they are pioneering how to reuse these giant boosters that are
normally thrown away in the ocean.
And you guys just happened to have the perfect conditions to create that exciting plume,
there's also been sighting like this in Miama when SpaceX launches, when other rocket companies
launch.
And what happens is if it's dark on Earth here and the sunset has already happened and
it's dark in the sky is starting to get dark.
That rocket is 100 to 160 miles or 160 miles or 200 plus kilometers in altitude and its
rocket plume, the smoke and all of its exhaust plume ends up still be illuminated by that
night sky, so it's, or by the sun and even though it's night sky here, it ends up being
illuminated with this really cool ghostly looking effect and that's exactly what you
guys were seeing.
So here we can see the Falcon 9 accelerating.
I'm going to go ahead and skip forward just a little bit, so you can get a better sense
of when this stage separation occurred.
Right about here... you'll see um stage separation.
So this is still the first stage burning brightly and watch what happens here.
That's engine cut off of the first stage and now we'll see the two stages separate like
I showed you before with the models and then the first stage is turning around while the
second stage reignites and that's exactly what you guys were seeing and you even see
that the first stage kind of gets pummeled there by the exhaust plume of that second
stage and there goes that first stage reigniting.
I, I get why everyone in California was going nuts, this was an incredible sight but um
again if you guys if you have questions leave them in the comments below.
I talk about all things space, and rockets and NASA.
Um and a lot about SpaceX in my videos, so make sure and subscribe if you guys are interested
in learning more about what this stuff is and why I'm so excited about it.
Umm I, I love this stuff.
This is incredible footage, I, I really wished I lived out there in California to see this
happen but um again, uh if you really want to know at all what SpaceX is and what they're
doing, I have two beginners guides, beginner's guide part one and part two, um so check that
out in my videos below.
But that's going to do it for me, a quick and short little update, updating the people
of California not to panic, not to freak out, but to be excited about a successful mission,
so that's gonna do it for me, I'm Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, bringing space down
to earth for everyday people.