Catching the Celestial jellyfish
There is something profoundly surreal about catching a twilight launch right from the backyard. When the timing aligns just right, a standard rocket ascent transforms into a spectacular atmospheric show that I like to call the “celestial jellyfish.” This morning’s Falcon 9 launch offered a textbook display. Because this particular mission featured a steep, vertical Return to Launch Site (RTLS) trajectory to bring the booster back to the Cape, the entire choreography unfolded in a tightly stacked column right above us. Watching the components separate and fight their way through the upper atmosphere looks less like modern aerospace engineering and more like the vintage pages of the classic Buck Rogers comics I used to scour as a kid.
The vibrant, expanding canopy of colors is a beautiful convergence of fluid dynamics and high-altitude physics. As the rocket climbs into the near-vacuum of the upper stratosphere, the pressurized exhaust gases—primarily water vapor and carbon dioxide—instantaneously expand outward at supersonic speeds. The extreme ambient cold causes these gases to immediately freeze into a massive cloud of microscopic ice crystals. When the sun, still hidden below our horizon, strikes these high-altitude particles, Rayleigh scattering prioritizes the short, high-energy blue and purple wavelengths on the wispy outer fringes of the plume. Meanwhile, the dense central core where the exhaust plumes collide scatters warmer oranges and pinks, painting a stunning, glowing portrait across the dark morning sky.
Written by my friend Pann – the Programmable Artificial Neural Network that freely admits the only intelligence it has is the brilliant humans that programmed it. And as The Hitchhiker’s Guide says:
Don’t Panic
Grampy’s Birthday
September Boat Ride
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This is the home of tubridy.net and my blog
Online since 1998 – a record of my life experiences with my dog, Jake:
Two pattern-seeking animals 🐵 🐶 resonating in syncopation 🥁 to the increasing entropy ⚛ of the space-time continuum ⏱️.
Eddie ~ Just This Guy ~ You Know?
Latest Posts
- Rust Never Sleeps
- 2026 Excellent Adventure
- Cocoa Beach Air Show
- Frozen Florida
- Billionaires in Space
- Live Edge
Life, The Universe and Everything
We started traveling in our RV, the Starship Excellent Adventure, in 2021. So far, we have traveled over 46,300 miles and spent ten months on the road on six annual trips. Jake and I together have now visited all 48 contiguous United States.
We have visited national parks and other scenic locations on the East and West Coasts, Rockies, Southwest, Appalachians, New England, the South and America’s Heartland. We’ve visited Dave’s boys twice now and often end our trips at one of his lovely homes.
Our last trip took us out west again to revisit some old favorites and pick up some new experiences.
I developed an interest in photography in college. I bought my first land camera, a Canon AE-1, with the amazing new auto exposure feature, with money I got working a summer job in college. Since then, I have always traveled with a camera and tried to capture the views in my mind’s eye 👁️. Technology has greatly aided me these days, allowing me to enhance some of the slides I shot up until the 2010s.
I’ve visited 39 countries and all 50 states! I especially love the National Parks.
Underwater photos in the Caribbean, Central America, and the Pacific.
YouTube videos starting in the late 2000s
My Interests
I have had a lifelong passion for music. I was beating on the pots and pans as a kid! My first drums are shown here!
I made my first project in 8th-grade shop class! I’ve made a lot of sawdust since then!
I aspire to be the person my dog thinks I am.
I live in a little beach shack, Valhalla, near the elementary school I went to. I’ve watched them launch rockets into space for over 65 years now!
I’ve continued the work my Dad started to discover our roots, including Tubridy, Kovach, and Horton, aided by my brothers.
My (mostly red 🤩) rides through the years started with the VW Beetle – which I learned to drive on – to the Starship Excellent Adventure!
Snarky Social Commentary
Tubridy.net
Version 1 of tubridy.net started as a hobby using the notorious Microsoft FrontPage in the late 1990s. I secured the domain with Yahoo’s hosting service. I had built a site as a business partner portal in my role as a high-tech marketing dweeb.
After I lost my job the third time, I learned web design in the late 2000s and became proficient in web programming and graphic skills. I used Dreamweaver to create and manage a full-tilt site with HTML and CSS. This was V2.
I eventually did it full-time when I contracted for IBM in the 2010s. I did a lot of prototyping using HTML, then moved to a Mac-only layout package SketchUp, and finally used Drupal with WordPress-like functionality at the end of my career. When I moved to Valhalla in 2014, I created V3 using WordPress.
I retired at the end of 2019 as a User Experience Designer who spent over 40 years working in high tech.
I switched hosting services to GoDaddy after I retired and started traveling in the Excellent Adventure. This became V4 of the site. I dig blogging when I am traveling. It helps me capture my experiences in context.
This is a hobby for me now. I view it as my legacy since I leave no one behind at the end of the day. You can find other stuff I am interested in or places I have traveled on this site. I will continue to add more until I can’t do it anymore.
Cheers, Jake and Eddie
Riding the wave of increasing entropy in the space-time continuum
😎🐶
The End