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Author
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Topic: The Atlas V and the alligator (launch photo)
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Robert Pearlman
Editor Posts: 54958
From: Houston, TX
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted 06-23-2025 01:43 PM
   
Just had to highlight this one... from United Launch Alliance (ULA): A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex-41 on June 23 at 6:54 a.m. EDT carrying the Kuiper 2 mission for Amazon's Project Kuiper broadband satellite constellation. When I first started attending launches as a journalist, I recall one of the old hands at Kennedy saying there was a long standing offer of a free steak dinner for the first photographer to capture a launch with an alligator in the foreground. Legend had it, some photographers had tried baiting their remote camera set-ups with steaks or other food, but never had any success...Ben (Cooper) you should collect your steak dinner!  |
onesmallstep
Member Posts: 1524
From: Staten Island, New York USA
Registered: Nov 2007
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posted 06-23-2025 02:27 PM
Nice photo! By coincidence; history records an earlier ancestor of the Atlas V launching the ATDA (Augmented Target Docking Adapter) on 1 June 1966, to be used by the Gemini IX-A crew of Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan for rendezvous and docking maneuvers. But as is known, the shroud covering the docking section did not fully separate-creating what Stafford famously called the appearance of an 'angry alligator.' |
SkyMan1958
Member Posts: 1414
From: CA.
Registered: Jan 2011
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posted 06-23-2025 04:09 PM
Very Cool!!! Thinking of old and new, there's a picture somewhere with, in the background, some shuttle on the launchpad in 1992, and, in the foreground, off the KSC Coast, reproductions of the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. |
Ben
Member Posts: 1942
From: United States
Registered: May 2000
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posted 06-25-2025 09:35 PM
Thanks Robert! Lucky shot. I'll take that steak now... |
Ken Havekotte
Member Posts: 3987
From: Merritt Island, Florida, Brevard
Registered: Mar 2001
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posted 07-25-2025 05:16 PM
This might be a long shot, but note the photograph of the first rocket launch from Cape Canaveral. It seems appropriate for this latest posting on the 75th anniversary of the Cape's first rocket launch-flight in July (this very same week) in 1950. It was a great shot that Ben had provided of last month's Atlas V/Kuiper 2, however, does anyone see or what I think I am seeing on this iconic rocket history photo below? Is that an alligator in the middle of that old Lighthouse Road leading into the entrance way of Bumper 8's Launch Pad #3? It sure looks like it could be in using a magnifying glass (does anyway possibly see a tail as the blue arrow is pointing to in the picture)?  |
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