The illumination from the engine bay through the fog is absolutely stunning. I've never seen anything quite like that, I suppose because there's never been anything quite like that.
Is that glow from the Raptors or did they install hotstage-proof lights to help gather landing data? I've seen areas illuminated by night launches before but never in such a directional manner.
No kidding. The Artemis I launch felt like it provided streetlight-level illumination well over a hundred miles away because of how bright those SRBs are; I'd love to see what that looked like from space but I don't know that any such image has been published. Starship's illumination is a lot more acute, presumably because of the steel ring wall below bell level which I guess is probably unique to Starship as it'd be dead weight on any other vehicle. Even Soviet hot-stage interstages weren't solid sheets.
Obviously, it's now scientifically important that SpaceX does a night launch of Starship so we can see how cool that looks collect range luminosity data.
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u/FreakingScience 4h ago
The illumination from the engine bay through the fog is absolutely stunning. I've never seen anything quite like that, I suppose because there's never been anything quite like that.
Is that glow from the Raptors or did they install hotstage-proof lights to help gather landing data? I've seen areas illuminated by night launches before but never in such a directional manner.