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Disney Goes Boom!
BoomZilla writes "Reading Disney's alliteratively titled Practically
Perfect Pyrotechnics introduces the latest in firework launch technology.
Gone are the 'light blue touch paper and retire a safe distance' days. Shells
are now launched using compressed air. No burning black powder means no smoke
drifting over the residential neighborhoods, plus a safer show. Best of all the
new system is more precise and can launch shells higher than black powder,
enabling spectacular new effects. An additional article:
The future of theme park fireworks
covers some of the pros and cons of compressed air launch systems." We mentioned this earlier.
I'm pretty excited about eventually seeing one of these shows in action. I don't think I'll miss the smoke of the rockets, as integral as that might be to a traditional show.
As long as the big boys still make that oh-so-satisfying "BOOM" when they go off, I'll be thrilled as ever.
--------------------- -me, Crusher of those who are Foolish (don't be foolish)
Thanks to Michaels Cooking the books and some finagling they had a pretty good looking quarter, last report, mostly due to the theme parks. They've been hemoraging cash on movies though, which should warm your heart.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Fireworks are launched by a classic blackpowder mortar system: there's a lofting charge in the launch tube (basically, a bag of gunpowder), and the shell (usually consisting of a bursting charge, a number of "stars", and filler to give it a spherical shape). Changing the lofting mechanism from gunpowder to compressed air won't make a bit of difference for the shell.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
LA has half the pollution and four time more cars then it had in 1970's.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
A typical 8" shell weighs about 3 pounds, of which about 1 ounce is the lift charge. Most of the weight comes from the shell casing (pressed glued paper) that holds the burst charge and the stars and keeps them together long enough for the stars to ignite when the timing fuse burns through to the burst charge. Disney is probably using 4" shells for most of their stuff, so figure a pound of shell with a tablespoon of lift charge.
For reference, the largest shell ever fired (the 36" Fat Man) weighed 800 pounds and was lifted 1400 feet in the air by 1/2 pound of black powder.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
Here's some additional info that the articles don't mention.
The WDI spokeswoman says "Disney isn't sure when its Central Florida theme parks could install or start testing the new fireworks launch system."
Actually, the air-launched fireworks are not completely new, but Disneyland is the first time they're using air for the whole (or majority of the) show. The first use was at Epcot down at Walt Disney World for the Illuminations: Reflections of Earth show - where the first "comet" effect that screams over the lagoon is air-launched from on top of one of the pavilion buildings. If you're walking in that area around 15 minutes before the show starts, they rope off the main pathway that passes under the launch area. You do hear a big fwoosh when it goes off. The last time this bit made Slashdot, some comments were debating the gas used - in this case they're compressing plain air.
The new Wishes fireworks show which has been playing since last Fall at the Magic Kingdom at WDW also planned to use the air launch, but the cost of the installation was too much and traditional fireworks have been used. Unlike WDW where there's a sizable land buffer between residences and the parks, Disneyland has large neighborhoods of people surrounding it, and they exert pressure on the local government to make things more difficult (and expensive) for Disneyland. Wishes also introduces the concept of firing shells from within the park off buildings in Fantasyland, which makes for some spectacular effects if you're watching from back in that area.
Also related, Disney is working with a top national lab on fireworks that look just like normal pyro, but burn with much less smoke. While some shows use the smoke the fireworks produce for great effect, eliminating it could be nice for others. Another technology that has been slowly introduced is the use of shells that contain a sacrificial computer chip that syncs its timing upon launch and fires an electronic fuse when up in the air to obtain much more precise ignition timing than could be accomplished conventionally.
Overall, there's some very cool tech going on, but whether Disney chooses to use it all over the place is more of a question of practicality than simply because they have it, so it's good to hear they're donating some of the tech.
and filler to give it a spherical shape
There are two major types of Class B fireworks in the world: the spherical (mostly Asian made) and the cylindrical (mostly American/European made). The Asian style uses a pre-fabricated hard casing so that filler is unnecessary for the shape of the shell; filler is used mostly for keeping the shell balanced in flight and to keep the stars spread out (helps with the nice round bursts). The American style uses a soft paper casing around a cardboard form. This is then wrapped with string and paper mache. The filler is required to stop the casing and form from collapsing when it is strung and glued.
Then again, this is Disney; they abhor the public domain, so it oprobably stands to reason that they wouldn't dare touch that prospect.
Not necessarily so. They open-sourced their Panda3D game engine, used most notably for their game Toontown Online.
Here's a bit from their FAQ:
Panda3D was originally developed at the Disney VR Studio. Disney VR used a proprietary IRIX-specific system called DWD (Disney's World Designer) to create several DisneyQuest Virtual Reality Attractions, such as "Aladdin's Magic Carpet VR Adventure", "Hercules in the Underworld", and "Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for the Buccaneer Gold", between 1997 and 2000. In 2000, Disney VR embarked on the Toontown Online project, and decided to build a new engine that contained many of the DWD design principles, but would be more modular, so it could be ported to more platforms, and more easily change over time. The new engine was dubbed "Panda3D", ostensibly standing for "Platform Agnostic Networked Display Architecture".
In 2002, Disney VR decided to make the engine open source, so they could more easily work with universities (such as UNC) on Virtual Reality research projects. However, the system, although quite usable by the team that developed it, was not quite "open source ready". There were several interested users, but building and installing the system was incredibly complex, and there was little in the way of documentation or sample code, so there was really no significant open source community right away.
In 2003, Jesse Schell left the VR Studio (on good terms, he claims) to join the faculty of the Carnegie Mellon Entertainment Technology Center. The ETC was looking for something like Panda3D -- a 3D engine powerful enough to create compelling experiences, but also open and flexible. Since then, ETC students have been working to make Panda3D usable at the ETC and by the world at large.
This refers, of course, to Mary Poppins, who was "Practically Perfect in Every Way", as anyone who has seen the movie will recall. Those of you with kids and a VCR, who have seen the damn movie at least 400 fricken times already and never want to see another dancing penguin for the rest of your fricken lives, will no doubt catch the reference right away.
And no, you can't watch "Hercules" either. Go read a book, for cryin' out loud.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
Some of the new high nitrogen explosives are well suited to this application.
It will be difficult to replace all of the colors produced by metals and other compounds used in fireworks- some of which are quite toxic (strontium, cadmium, arsenic, antimony, PVC plastic, etc.). It will also be much more expensive. But high nitrogen explosives and newer organic compounds have a lot to offer the field- including colors you can't get with the old standbys.
Some of the high nitrogen stuff I used to work with was pretty interesting. Lots of newer, potentially safer compounds are in the pipeline- mainly for military applications, but they can be bastardized to, er, recreational purposes.