Europe's Earth-watching satellite streaks aloft

Re: Eerm . . .

Did somebody think to tell North Korea about the launch, ...

Why? The Norks' contribution to LEO satellites are a couple of small, non-transmitting hulks, tumbling uselessly. Absent any space capability, Fat Boy Kim will be ignorant of the goings on deep in the less interesting parts of Russia until his flunkies read tomorrow's South Korean newspapers on his behalf.

Re: Don't you need to clean up the whole launchpad afterwards

Trusting Wikipedia on this:

Unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (not to be confused with symmetrical dimethylhydrazine, which is horribly used "to induce colon tumors in experimental animals") is toxic, a carcinogen and can explode in the presence of oxidisers. It can be absorbed through skin. UDMH released into the environment can react in air to form N-Nitrosodimethylamine which is extremely toxic, not biodegradable and can also be found in beer.

Re: Don't you need to clean up the whole launchpad afterwards

I expect the efflux from the rockets will be the least of our problems.

Re: Is this the sentinel...

Don't blame the techies. I'm sure the science package will collect the data with the highest accuracy possible. The political corrections will occur after that data is downlinked.

Re: I watched the webcast

These things are meant to deliver hot pizza to the end consumer in 15 minutes.

Re: I watched the webcast

If it's pushing that hard at the start, what's the g-load when most of the fuel is gone?

Re: F=ma

It's the total thrust for stage 1

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rokot )

But remember the mass is not a constant as we're burning the fuel (a significant part of launch mass)

over the next 120 seconds...

Re: F=ma

So the initial departure is at 0.96G upwards (after you subtract earths gravity dragging it downwards), accelerating as fuel is burned off. Dropped items fall fairly quickly, so imagine something falling upwards.