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Shuttle Cameras Yield Excellent Footage
Jivecat writes "All those extra cameras NASA has added to the Space Shuttle to watch for debris impacts have yielded what may be the coolest Shuttle launch footage ever. The forward-facing view from the right-hand SRB shows, at about the 2:58 mark, booster separation and Discovery zooming away. Other views are available at the main mission site."
the NASA site suggests. The MPlayer plugin for Firefox (same thing you use for CNN's video) works fine. Great footage.
"I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator"-Adolf Hitler or George W Bush?
The camera supplier has a history of offering these amazing videos in MPEG format. Lets hope the new Discovery videos will be added to the last. The image of the orbiter/ET accelerating from the spent boosters is some of the most spectacular aerospace footage I have ever seen.
an ill wind that blows no good
Something like 4m 30s of freefall (3:00-7:30) on that video. Very neat. Can someone with greater knowledge than I explain how the camera survived re-entry, or is there no re-entry at that altitude yet?
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
on the main mission site linked to in the article, they have an mpeg posted of the seperation
/ sts-121/mpg/srb_fd01h_ra.mpg
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/video/shuttle
Where are we going, and why are we in this hand cart?
my logitech webcam has clearer imaging than the footage from these cameras
but your webcam isn't strapped onto a continuously exploding bomb hurtling through all layers of the atmosphere in a matter of minutes.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
The SRB's never technically 'leave' the atmosphere so they can't re-enter. They are going pretty fast but not Mach 25 like the shuttle and station are doing on orbit. Maybe a few (2-4) Mach. Actually the shuttle goes quite slow while the SRB's are on because the atmosphere is so dense at low altitudes (the SRB's are only on for just over 2 minutes) because dynamic pressure builds up quickly ( a linear function of air density and a square of velocity ) so you keep your velocity at a fair clip until the atmosphere thins and then speed up. Long story short the SRB's aren't going that fast, and the cameras are in a good housing. The cam itself is made by these guys
feel better?
/ sts-121/mpg/srb_fd01h_ra.mpg
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/video/shuttle
just install the codecs for MPlayer. Unless you are too lazy ... worked for me last shuttle mission ...
Not to mention theora is still alpha software. Too new, still unproven, there is a perfectly good reason.
Well, from a NASA website.
About 125 seconds after launch and at an altitude of about 150,000 feet, the SRB's burn out and are jettisoned from the ET. The jettison command originates from the Orbiter, and jettison occurs when the forward and aft attach points between the SRB's and ET are blown by explosive charges.
28 miles may not be space, per se, but it is pretty damn high.
Interestingly, watch closely, a couple minutes in, you can see pressure waves form small clouds on the leading edge of the shuttle as it breaks the sound barrier. *Very* cool stuff...
FYI, the camera landed in the water. Unless Texas has a disproportionate number of hydroponic ranches, I don't think NASA will be fielding too many of these complaints.
Pertinent video: http://mfile.akamai.com/18566/wmv/etouchsyst2.down load.akamai.com/18355/wm.nasa-global/sts-121/right _aft_srb_camera.asx
Are you talking about that flurry of what looks like tentacles at around 7:38? I think you might have been seeing the lines from the parachute hitting the water and flowing past the camera.
Probably a lot of people already know this, but you can download (instead of just watching it in streaming) WMV files with a "mms://" URI under Linux using MPlayer.
Just do something like this:
This is useful if you have a connection too slow for live streaming or you simply want to do something with the downloaded file.
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
And at the :45 mark you can see the NASA Sound Suppresion System kick in (aka water).
http://www.nasa.gov/missions/shuttle/f_watertest.h tml
There's a LOT of neat stuff in there. For example:
1:30-1:40 Mach transition (breaking the sound barrier - watch the nose)
2:39 a rather visible bit of debris flies right past the camera
2:58 separation from the orbiter/tank stack
3:59 as the booster tumbles, you can briefly spot the shuttle as a bright dot
5:18 you can see the smoke plume thru the upper atmosphere
7:13 some debris goes past the booster camera
7:17 you can see a shroud (parachute) line falling
7:25 you can very briefly see a chute
7:30 water entry
7:40 the chute falls into the water
8:00 as the booster floats, the chutes and shroud lines are clearly visible around the booster
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
They recover the whole booster, not just the camera.
As I understand it they do reuse at least part of the booster for a number of launches.
http://fire-eyes.org/temp/sts-121/
let me know if you can find any others, especially if you can find the full high quality version (one of the mpegs above is a small clip of the high quality version).
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
mplayer -dumpstream
can do that without decompressing...
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
Yes, it has been resized, cropped and compressed. Someone else posted a link to an MPEG file from NASA that was twice the resolution. Apparently it was from an analog NTSC source. It was full of interlacing artifacts, and it had black bars on both sides. Whoever released the WMV apparently just discarded one set of fields and halved the horizontal resolution instead of deinterlacing. They also cropped to remove the black bars and compressed it to a pretty low bitrate.
The heat shield tiles are designed to be reused for several missions. If they fail inspection after a mission, they are replaced prior to the next mission.
From NASA:
t ion/shuttle_faq.html#10
b ean:_Dead_Man's_Chest
Q. How much does it cost to launch a Space Shuttle?
A. The average cost to launch a Space Shuttle is about $450 million per mission.
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/informa
From Wiki:
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Budget US$225 million
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_of_the_Carib
I'll take the shuttle launch anyday over the common blockbuster.
When they land tail first, the air(or gasses left over from combustion) gets trapped in the tube and this is what makes the SRB buoyant. I did notice from the rear camera view, that the SRB appears to almost get horizontal right after landing, but it still seems to remained pitched at such an angle that gas should still be contained inside. Then it settles in an upright orientation. Check this out: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/pdf/146685main _srb-et.pdf And: http://www.spawar.navy.mil/robots/undersea/srbnp/s rbnp.html
Here are the links to the two SRB cameras (hopefully this works):
.torrent.
right_aft_srb_camera.mov.torrent
right_forward_srb_camera.mov.torrent
There is something wrong with my MIME types, so save the file as and, if necessary, rename to
The tiles are modular. each with its own little barcode. The heat of re-entry is quite murderous to the surface of these tiles, and as they heat up the outer surface will oxidize and not look as glossy. Ever see the heat shield on an Apollo capsule? Looks very similar. Tiles in high stress/wear areas are more likely to detach from the orbiter, and their shiny black replacements can be seen in an up close view. The reasoning goes, if the tile is still good, if a bit cloudy, why replace it? It's an unnecessary expense to the taxpayer, and painting the tiles would add weight, cost, and have the paint burn away on re-entry.
I'm sorry but you'll just have to live with an unattractive but working heat shield.