Short post this time, just to update everyone on short-term viewing opportunity changes as a result of Hurricane Milton, with some bearing on Europa Clipper.
Viewing Changes
Playalinda Beach officially entered winter hours this weekend, 6am-6pm as opposed to the summer hours of 6am-8pm. That being said, that doesn’t amount to much because for the foreseeable future, Playalinda Beach is closed due to the substantial damage the storm did to the beachfront. Between erosion and structural damage, it’s not like there’s much of anything there as it is. So, for those wishing for that 3-mile-away head-on view of Clipper, no joy.
As far as 3-mile-away views of Clipper go, the hurricane-induced slip meant a lot of folks who originally bought tickets to watch from KSC returned theirs, and as such KSC has freed up a limited number of Feel The Heat tickets for that 3 mile away view from Banana Creek. Online only. KSC was closed Thursday and Friday for the hurricane, but I believe they reopened Saturday.
I haven’t done an extensive survey, but every day I bike home from work I ride up US1 in titusville, and all of the waterfront parks in Titusville appear to have reopened, but may have damage from coastal erosion. I can’t vouch for the ones down in Port St. John and so on, though.
Jetty Park in Port Canaveral is closed until further notice. It no doubt saw a fair chunk of damage from the sea swelling and all the wind.
KARS Park on Merritt Island has been slowly restoring their facilities, but appears to be back in operation (i believe it’s $5/car for launch viewing, supporting the NASA Exchange.)
The Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge is closed, but slowly reopening some of their facilities bit by bit. Nothing that really pertains to launch viewing here, though.
How did I do in Milton
I almost didn’t put this section in, but. I did fine in milton. We lost power at 6:30 AM, had it back around 7:30 PM. My li’l trailer did just fine in the winds, didn’t get any debris hitting the windows (which is good ’cause i couldn’t board ’em up), and all my stuff in the fridge survived in a cooler with some ice packs. Except the sour cream, that got too cold and separated. But it was almost gone anyhow.
Went back to work on Friday as normal, except “before open” prep included cutting up and hauling two felled trees to the curb for the city to collect. And a lot of palm fronds and branches. But less palm fronds than after Helene, presumably because Helene blew all the loose and dead ones off last week.
As far as backend site updates go, as of now both LaunchRats and Wayward’s personal website (kept up in memoriam) are on the new hosting provider, and i have ceased business with the old one, as their business practices bordered on highway robbery at this point. They got taken over by another company and run into the ground. With those migrations underway, now we can focus on the actual retooling of this website, and I can also begin work on creating a new portfolio website, so i’m not paying for 3 hosting providers (the third being Smugmug, the photos-only one whose services I don’t use enough to justify the cost). That portfolio will live at lupi.photos, eventually.
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’til the next sunrise, stay dry, safe travels and happy launches,
Lupi
launchrats.com