Arianespace Flight VA247

Interesting differences from a SpaceX or NASA launch video.

NASA does a terrible job of broadcasting their launches, they do good in-space video on NASA-TV, but the launches will usually show a burn and then some infographics and then cut off. NASA's public relations is the bare minimum, lowest-bidder attempt required by Federal disclosure laws, and it shows.

SpaceX is halfway to being a media company, just because they instrument and record everything, so they have great photography of the launch, flight, then on-rocket cameras showing second state separation, and landings, and cool synthwave music before and after. Even when they're not launching a car into deep space, they always put on a cool show.

Arianespace is like NASA-TV, only showing a burn and then CGI renders of what they think is happening, and slightly better live tracking info than NASA-TV. But half their audio & text is in French, German, or Spanish, they haven't standardized on English and some Russian-pidgin like NASA or SpaceX. They spend an inordinate amount of time explaining their political/economic structure, because it's a horrible bureaucratic compromise between countries that barely tolerate each other; they have to launch from French Guiana, one of their last conquered colonial holdings/penal colonies (remember the movie Papillon? That's French Guiana; they really made prisoners catch rare butterflies for the warden's profit); Charles De Gaulle demanded a spaceport be built there in the '60s, which is a bit of a boondoggle but it's still their best spaceport.

Hey, let's interrupt the flight to show an ad promoting Seville for some political thing.

There's a moral question hanging over this like the Sword of Damocles: Should you be launching satellites for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with its known-murder-conspirator "prince"? Well, the next two in-flight ads don't even argue that, they just say it's great that the Saudis have paid Arianespace for these launches, and thank the murderer prince by name. I suppose it's rude to say "he should be hung by the neck until dead" to your paycheck's medieval aristocracy.

Another ad for Lockheed/Martin, who made one of the satellites being launched, and ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization), who made the other.

One final bit of actual launch news, explaining their telemetry gaps, but repeating "perfectly normal" sounds apologetic, rather than factual. I trust nothing the bureaucrat says by now.

Finally bureaucrats give each other handshakes and blowjobs all around. No sign of the engineers or scientists who do the actual work.

Maybe 10, 15 minutes of actual launch content in 85 minutes of airtime.