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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?
Does your webcam do that at Mach 25? How about at very high (hundreds or thousands of degrees F.) of heat? Something tells me the quality of your webcam suffers (ie, it melts) in those sorts of situations...
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
For the one video linked, I'm amazed it didn't get slashdotted immediately. Very interesting to watch the launch sequence. At 3 min, I thought it was getting a bit boring, but wondered what else was interesting in the rest of the footage. At about 8 min, it got interesting again, with the very quick transition from "over the clouds" to "underwater". Not much new to see after 9 min though.
I do wish my webcam could deal with that wide a range of operating environments though! You quickly forget the engineering that goes into something as simple as a camera housing.
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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
Try THAT on a sound stage in a desert!!
Beautiful video. I imagine the part after it separates would be awesome drunk.
"This food is problematic."
feel better?
/ sts-121/mpg/srb_fd01h_ra.mpg
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/video/shuttle
I am amazed at how these cameras manage to survive and produce a steady image from the atmosphere, into space, and back. This leads me to believe that instead of using foam insulation, we should cover the entire shuttle in cameras.
About 10 minutes into it I found myself thinking, "Man! I hope they pull me out soon, I can't hold my breath much longer."
That I would have had to hold my breath through the whole liftoff sequence didn't really bother me - just the being under water part.
Has this stuff really become that run-of-the-mill to you?
There's been over 100 successful shuttle missions. Every single one of these is astonishing to me, even though I may agree with plenty of the criticisms of the programme. There's a visceral joy in seeing these things do their stuff -- ageing, expensive and cumbersome though they may be.
I cannot for a second understand how [i]anything[/i] to do with spaceflight -- even the simplest satellite deployment -- could be classed as mundane.
What's the frequency, Kenneth?
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...
If I could just download the copy of /right_forward_srb_camera.wmv being mirrored through (funky.dns.tricks.akamaistream.net), it would probably have stayed up longer.
But a certain DRM-infected media player doesn't welcome the SaveAs menu overlord. After all, how dare anyone think of downloading something (at whatever bitrate their client, or the overloaded server, might support) to your hard drive where you could play it back at your leisure, when you can just download the same content, asking the central server for permission over and over again, every time you wanted to see something?
Streaming video blows goats. The video's probably in the public domain. Put up a goddamn downloadable .MOV, .MPG, or yes, even a .WMV link. But enough of the streaming video, and don't even get me started on a site that requires a Javashit popup to load the goddamn .asx file that points to the streaming video in the first place. Web design ain't rocket science -- it's EASIER than rocket science. Last time I checked, there were a few folks at NASA who have the requisite skills, right?
To give credit to rocket scientists who do get it, check out how the JPL folks working on the Cassini mission handle videos. You know before you click, not just what format it's in, but how big it's gonna be, and you get to save everything to disk.
Earth to NASA: Dump the streaming video, at least for public domain content.
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
Give it 36 hours.
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.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
Shorter then any hollywood film I've seen, and it moved me more then any film I've ever seen. The launch probably cost the same. If this isn't proof of the results a small percentage of our bomb making taxes can provide, I don't think you're a sane person.
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.
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