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High Power RocketCam Videos
HaveNoMouth writes "What happens when the founder of Xircom and his brother bolt a DV Camcorder to the side of a 200 lb. model rocket and press the red button? The incredible movies (with sound!) at Gates Bros. Rocketry tell the tale. The quality of these movies is by far the best I've seen from the "strap a camera to a flying toy" community. They have a nice gallery of still photos too.
If only everyone named Gates did stuff this cool."
Tens of thousands of USD is blown up in the air and converted into a couple of movies which can be shown on Slashdot so that we can make insightful comments like this?
if only they could strap a DVcam to the desk pointing at the blinkenlights on their server as the poor thing gets slashdotted to hell and back
You know, since Carmack shares a love of the same hobby as these gentlemen, I wonder if this would interest him? I would say it might. And being that it might, I wonder if he would code a mini-cam for the Rocket Launcher in Doom III? Bullet-time eat your heart out!
Zech Harvey, MCSE, MCDBA, CCNA
I guess it'd be an improvement over strapping someone to a rocket then hoping they survived the landing so they could tell you about it.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
So I build this nice, trim little single stage rocket (solid fuel), and my brother talks me into strapping another zero delay motor onto the bottom....it went fine until the tagged on motor lit the main motor....the rocket tumbled just for an instant, and when the main motor fired, the rocket was horizontal...it quickly made it to a nearby freeway and took out an aged Mustang. We figured since lunch was almost over we'd just as soon head back to the lab and quietly call it a day. A camera on that one would have shown one ticked off Mustang owner, I'm sure.
:)
Don't know if I have the nerve to sacrifice a DV camera...but maybe someone else's camera would be ok
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
"What happens when...."
For one, JVC and Canon camcorder models mentioned in the site get shock certified at 0.6 Mach speed, with forces exceeding 1G. Wow!
"Do something man. Right now."
Is it really really neccessary to have a cheap shot at MS no matter how little the post might be related? Why don't we just have a default sig "Windoze sucks, Linux rulez."?
Just in case the posters read the comments: Please lash out at MS and other scapegoats ONLY when it is justified. (not too optimistic, since not all posters proofread the submissions or even read the articles, it seems... sigh...)
It's pretty offtopic, I know, but does anyone else here really wonder about Bill Gates? I mean, he is a geek, right? Would it be possible to hang out with the guy and have a good time chatting about different clever ways to approximate solutions to the travelling salesman problem?
Does the guy code?
Does he have other geek hobbies?
I mean, seriously. I think this is fascinating stuff. Whether we like it or not, HE'S ONE OF US (but maybe with a different economic perspective). Wouldn't it be interesting to get to know the other Bill Gates?
Oh, the videos of the rockets are OK too.
*rimshot*
What happens when the founder of Xircom and his brother bolt a DV Camcorder to the side of a 200 lb. model rocket and press the red button?
:)
You prove to NASA that it can be done cheaply?
-mo
Wouldn't it be better and more rewarding to give the money to charity than to just blow up DV camcorders.
No.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
I'd rather see these on prime-time TV than glorified remote-controlled chainsaws destroying each other... The views of the horizon gliding into place is absolutely breathtaking!
BTW, if you had actually RTFA or watched the videos, you would know that they recover the rockets using parachutes - which keeps the camcorders from breaking apart when the rockets reacquaint themselves with terra firma.
If you really believe your own bullshit, what are you doing with a computer and an internet connection? For what you spend every month on your internet connection alone you could feed a starving child in Uganda for a year! I mean, really! Shame on you (and me)!
We should be volunteering at our local soup kitchens and donating all our spare cash to feed those poor starving children in some nameless backwater instead of surfing the web, watching TV, and playing with our modded Xboxes. After all, /. user number 601843 says so!
"Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
With the camera sticking out of the side? Many, many rockets have been totally destroyed from just losing one fin. This series of rockets had a whole fairing bigger than a grapefruit protruding from it and it never tumbled. (except the one which had a parachute failure.)
I'm curious to know: Do you have to get permission to launch these things? or is it a free-for-all
Is there some sort of height limit?
What about the UK (where I live)?
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
If you don't live in the USA you are a terrorist. We will bomb you eventually.
Piglet was firmly taped to a display firework rocket (one of those damn huge ones), head facing the sky before being fired into the sky. Can you say "Pigs in Spaaaaaaace!" ;) :)
I wish we could have had a Piglets eye view of it, we kept finding bits of piglet in nearby streets for days
I'm sorry, but I'm thinking of those FoxTrot comics where Marcus and Jason attach the video camera to the rocket which upsets the balance and it flies straight at them. Something along those lines happaned to me once.
What amazes me is that the video camera can still record footage succesfully given the enormous g-forces sustained at takeoff. The clarity of video appears unaffected.
I would have at least expected a bit of flicker as the tape strains, or the motor backtracks a little or something...
Very cool.
I can't believe you are comparing rocketry videos with using chemical weapons on your own people. When I was in school, you could tell a debate was degenerating when someone made an analogy to Hitler. Today, it is Saddam.
Congratulations on resorting to the last refuge of a desperate debater. Only took you 50 minutes from your first post.
And I assume you have the credentials to back up this claim? Please tell me which university has granted you a degree in rocket science or aerospace engineering.
It is quite simple, these people are *burning* money for no other reason than there own individualistic selfish satisfaction.
It's their money to burn. Maybe the people who do these kinds of things also tend to be socially-conscious people who donate a sizeable chunk of time and/or money to the Good Cause Du Jour. Besides, hobbies, individualism and fun are bad because...?
I am merely stating that when you look around at the world (and the Internet has been enormously useful in helping us to do just that) you see repressive states, anti-democractic regimes, torture, poverty, starvation and unhappiness.
And what exactly do you suggest we do about this? I mean it - if you have the solutions to these problems, speak up! People have been trying to solve these problems for literally thousands of years - if you know how to solve them, well...the Nobel Peace Prize awaits!
When you start to think you as a nation have absolutely no responsibilies to the rest of the globe (ie as America so often does)...
You're right. We don't. Since when did the US (or any other nation) become the world's police force/janitors/feeders/saviours? Why should we have to clean up the messes made by others? Everybody bitches when the US doesn't get involved, then they bitch when the US does get involved. Make up your fucking minds already!
...Resentment caused by the US getting involved and trying to help someone somewhere (regardless of whether said attempts to help were unsuccessful and/or directed at the wrong people or places - nobody ever said the US was perfect, at least nobody who's sane).
And if this is allowed to grow unchecked *no* amount of American hegemony or military muscle is going to stop it.
Hear hear! Personally I'd like to see the US withdraw from the UN and tell them to find another country to hold their parties in, then withdraw all military forces to US soil, to be used only to totally annihilate any nation that invades the country or blows up parts of it. Then tell the rest of the world to go clean up their own damn mess.
But then maybe its true that you *really* don't care and don't want to know...
<sarcasm>You're right. I don't care and I don't want to know. I just want to watch cool videos of big penis-shaped rockets being fired into the air, and speculate on how big of a payload they could carry to blow up schools and hospitals in some third-world starving hellhole.</sarcasm>
(jlanthripp, posting anonymously because of the bleeding heart socialists with mod points)
What happens when?... it gets slashdotted! Help them out, slashdot!
Anybody get a mirror? Maybe slashdot should think about providing mirrors of small time operators' sites when an article like this is posted. We all *know* the poor little guy is going to get slashdotted. At best, he can't show his girlfriend/ dad/ best friends what he is up to. At worst, he gets a hefty bandwidth bill from his ISP. Linking to IBM etc is another thing, but surely slashdot could show a bit of community spirit and responsibility and offer a mirror before posting up articles with links to little guys?
If only everyone named Gates did stuff this cool.
If only everyone named Gates could create a web server that could take a slashdotting.
I hope you're not pretending to be evil while secretly being good. That would be dishonest.
What happens when the founder of Xircom and his brother bolt a DV Camcorder to the side of a 200 lb. model rocket and press the red button?
They have to get a new web hosting provider because the old one gets slashdotted, blames them for the outage, and kicks them out?
link to photos of GB rockets at LDRS
Really this is like the 10th time in the past two weeks you guys have hosed someone's site. You should start asking permission before you post someone's site here.
"If only everyone named Gates did stuff this cool."
:)
What? Windows for Warheads?
I use OS X and don't have much of a problem with DivX;). You need to get yourself a copy of DivX Doctor II to convert from DivX .avi videos to 3ivx QuickTime (.mov) videos.
--
Reverse outsourcing: it's the future
There was also a Tribes 1 mod that allowed you to deploy a base station which you could load with various missle types (my favorite was the one that exploded in poison gas) and then fly them around the map. You had to put them on the ground or on a structure, and you could only carry one missle ata time, so they had to be near an inventory station. My brother and I found a bug which allowed you to delpoy them on these floating, mid-air platforms with inventory stations. He'd fly a bomber waaaay up into the sky, I'd jump out, deploy the platform, fall to my death. He'd fly above the platform, jump out onto it, then set up a transporter. I'd respawn in the base, set up the other transporter, and wind up on the base in the sky. Then we'd set up missle stations and fly around destroying things. The best was when you had a missle in the air and you saw a scout car (really fast one-man vehicles). They were the same speed as the missles (except for one type) and catching them was a challenge. Occasionally, we'd get three people flying missles around. It took about 4 minutes to gain air superiority over most of the map. It took about 8 minutes for the other team to find our base in the sky and blow it up (or try, we'd defend it pretty well).
Anyway, flying missles around is great in CTF-type FPS games, especially when they have ultra-large, indoor/outdoor maps like in Tribes -- it gives the game a "Gulf War" flavor.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Slashdot hosts text, and the few images it feels it needs for the UI, which are cached by most browsers. It needs beefy database and application servers, but the bandwidth is relatively low.
Slashdot's 'content', what people come for, is all hosted by other people. It almost always is full of multimedia. They pay the real bandwidth costs.
In this business, at sufficient scales, bandwidth approaches 100% of the costs, the servers nearly factor out. So, Slashdot offers a service to its readers for almost nothing by passing on the content costs to the sites it links to.
Don't get me wrong, the slashdot infrastructure is well-done, it's highly available and you do need good capacity to handle the user base it has, but it couldn't be profitable if it had to pay for all the bandwidth the 'Slashdot-experience' requires.
Now, if they had caches for 'gold-level' subscribers, that might be profitable, say at a hundred bucks a year.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
If you don't want people to look at your website, don't make it public.
/., they don't have to ask anyone's permission before linking to your site. A similar situation is, if someone finds a cool web site, they don't have to ask permission before forwarding the URL to their friends (even though that might cause it to be forwarded on to thousands more people)
If you DO make it public, and a lot of people suddenly look at it, and as a result you exceed your bandwidth/transfer-limit/server-specs limitations, this means one of two things:
(1) Your site has become, at least temporarily, far more popular than you anticipated! Hooray!! Now to call the ISP...
(2) You can't afford to be popular, so you probably shouldn't have made it so public. You, the server administrator, made a mistake. Perhaps you should have required a password to access the resources.
If someone runs their own web page, like
If someone makes your server so popular that you can't handle it, that's really not their problem.
-=Ivan