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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.
The air in the Los Angeles/San Bernardino area can be pretty awful, which probably has a lot more to do with their efforts to decrease smoke. I visited the Grand Canyon years ago and heard sometimes the visibility, in the summer is so poor you can't see across the canyon, thanks to smog from San Diego and Los Angeles/San Bernardino, hundreds of miles to the west. (Fortunately I was there in winter, which I highly recommend (South Rim open only), with 200+ miles of visibility.)
A word of advice: Try to avoid a down-wind position for fireworks as sulpherous ash may drift down into your eyes and it burns like H2S.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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.
But I like watching the billows of smoke drifting across the river! And if the fireworks go any higher, I won't be able to watch them from my computer desk! They'll be blocked by the balcony of the apartment above mine!
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You get my hopes up, then no chapter 11. :-(
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
We still hate Disney, right?
Or do we like them now? Or do we like thier fireworks - but feel immediately compelled to qualify that statement with BUT DISNEY STILL SUCKS...
I'm so confused.
...Also, I didn't know Buggalo could fly.
Perhaps Disney would give you some of their leftover black powder pyrotechnics and you could take care of that upper balcony.
If I could, I'd destroy you all.
I just find it amusing that Disney released all this news about their revolutionary, wonderful new launch system and then proceeded to roll out a new pyrotechnic show at Disneyland that, by all accounts, is disappointing at best compared to the one it replaced. Sure, it may be less polluting, but it's also a lot less fun.
Sure, there are other factors that caused the switch in shows, but the timing was unfortunate. They basically managed to associate environmentally friendly fireworks with totally boring fireworks, which, by an inspection of their description of the new launch technique, really isn't the case at all.
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.
When it goes all the way down the street, and rolls under a neighbors car, still on fire...the decision to go get it or run is a tough one.
(don't ask how I know this)
My potato guns use a customized ignition like what you're describing. The guns themselves are PVC, and the ignition is a camera flash circuit wired through a car ignition coil, which goes into a spark plug. Hairspray shoots the potatoes a good 150 yards if you wedge them in there enough.
:-)
Slightly more on-topic though, a friend of mine has a real nice compressed air potato gun that has an electronically triggered poppet valve. Despite the fact that his gun cost much more and is so much more complex, mine shoots more rapidly, farther, and louder. They both get a nice cloud of smoke out the barrel after the shot though. His because of the rapid decompression, and mine because of the burning hairspray. Surprisingly, we have mutual respect for each other's designs and we don't really compete with each other so much as help with design and construction problems.
My next gun will be compressed air, and once I figure it out with PVC, I'm moving on to stainless steel to hopefully get a supersonic potato (or other projectile) gun
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
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.
I imagine someone in a location where fireworks are legal could rig up a poor mans version using something similar to a Potato Cannon (the pneumatic type).
Correct. These are the same people you read about in the Darwin Awards.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
When I read this article the first time, I emailed it to a friend of mine who works in the Pyrotechnics division at Disney World, and he replied saying that he didn't know what prompted them to write that article when they did -- Disney has been using that technology for several years now. Oh well, I guess old news is still news. Maybe it was just a slow news day the first time /. had that article, and an even slower news day this time...
They've been hemoraging cash on movies though
Darn right:
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.
Now with improved accuracy Tinkerbell becomes a more formidable target.
can't sleep. clowns will eat me.
Who cares about the fireworks. Just think how far one of those compressors could launch a potatoe! This also presents an alternative to traditional guns. Forget plastic bullets, now you can kill/knockout your enemys with enviromentally friendly, biodegradable food staples. Where can I get one?
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.
There is a big difference between what's right, and the results of the US legal system.
Example: Small airports were built all over the country. Decades later, the land around them was made into housing developments. Then people sued to have the noisy airports restricted to the point they were no longer viable, or shut down altogether. They consistently win, because there are 100 irate homeowners vs. 30 people who want to preserve the pre-existing airport. Bye-bye airport. The ultimate irony is when the runway becomes the main street through the new subdivision that's built where the airport was, and all the subdivision streets have names like Blue Sky Place and Lindbergh Drive.
It's similar to developers leveling a beautiful stand of trees to pack as many little vinyl houses as possible into a congested suburban hell, and naming the subdivision Aspen Acres. I guess Fugly Houses Estates doesn't sound very good.
Maybe I'm getting even more cynical in my old age, but there seem to be fewer and fewer instances where Right and Reality coincide.
>> My ultraviolent Linux switch video.