Originally published at: Magnificent photo and video of the moment Zeus unleashed his wrath on SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket | Boing Boing
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The lightning bolt actually hit the protection mast atop the tower, protecting the rocket from the electrical surge. It went up on Sunday instead.
Went up, as in “took off”; or went up as in “ka-bloom”?
I always get a strong “Ron Mael” vibe from that photo.
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But, but Zeus was in the last Thor movie.
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Yes.
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Nearly as good as Apollo 12 which was twice hit by lightning a few seconds after blast off. The launch shouldn’t have gone ahead as there was overcast and rain, but NASA decided to go ahead anyway in order that 12 could visit the site of Surveyer 3 probe; had it been delayed to the next launch window, Surveyor would have been off the mission.
The two strikes knocked out the fuel cells and the Apollo’s attitude system, but the rocket’s own guidance system remained functioning. There was confusion at mission control when the telemetry turned to garbage, but the situation was fixed by the awesome Alan Bean who knew the correct switch needed to flip Apollo into its auxiliary power supply. He was later able to restore main power and the mission went ahead as planned - although he did manage to wreck the colour TV camera by pointing it at the Sun.
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I saw a presentation about that by some former NASA engineers. What’s interesting was that it wasn’t just any ordinary lightning strike, but lightning that was triggered by the rocket itself. NASA did a study and learned a lot about how rockets in flight can trigger lightning in certain specific weather conditions, then promptly forgot those lessons which led to the destruction of an uncrewed Atlas rocket in 1987.
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This sort of thing wouldn’t happen if we brought back prayers to Zeus in schools.
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