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The View From Inside A Fireworks Show

Posted by Unknown on from the things-that-go-boom dept.

kdataman (1687444) writes "There is a breathtaking video on Youtube of someone flying a quadcopter around and through a professional fireworks display. Of course, it was an illegal and dangerous thing to do. It also may inspire someone else to do something even more dangerous. But even so, I have watched it 4 times and get goosebumps every time. An article in Forbes says that unit is a DJI Phantom 2 with a GoPro Hero 3 Silver camera. The fireworks are in West Palm Beach, Florida."

9 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. Illegal and Dangerous? by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why on Earth did TFA call it 'illegal and dangerous'?

    It's only dangerous to the drone. There are no humans up there to crash into.

    --
    I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    1. Re:Illegal and Dangerous? by SuperTechnoNerd · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Read about the new ridiculous rules the FAA imposed about drones.. Then you will understand.
      Don't you know we are living in a time when someone does something cool, it is automatically illegal?

    2. Re:Illegal and Dangerous? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Read about the new ridiculous rules the FAA imposed about drones...

      Until some moron flys one into the path of a commercial airliner, small plane, or helicopter, and people die - than it's "why isn't the FAA doing something about this?"

    3. Re:Illegal and Dangerous? by robbak · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Professional fireworks are mortar-fired shells, not rockets that can go off-course if nudged. So if a shell hit the drone on the way up, it would smash straight through it and keep on going. There is not enough mass in a drone, and a drone is not solid enough, to deflect the solid mass of a firework shell travelling at speed. It might not quite reach the same height by a few meters, or might end up a couple of feet off target, but neither of these things would matter.

      And if the drone is up at altitude where the shells explode, then there is even less speed involved. The shell has reached it's height - so what if it taps a drone before detonating.

      There is also whole lot of sky, and both shells and drones are small. The chance of the two coming together is practically nil.

      Amazing pictures captured with zero risk. Images from a drone up there amongst it all should be a permanent feature of firework presentations.

      --
      Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
  2. Absolutely Awesome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't understand the negative comments here. This is using technology to get a viewpoint of something in a way that a few years previously would have been impossible. Love it.

  3. Re:Idiotic by Dins · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How is this idiotic? Unless you're talking about the potential idiocy of wasting all that money on a drone and a Gopro camera potentially blown up by fireworks. This was filmed over water. Nobody was in danger except the drone owner's bank account. (And maybe the one in a million chance of the drone falling on the odd boater...)

  4. Pilots View in WWII over Germany by BoRegardless · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Though not as colorful, you can now imagine what it was like for a pilot and copilot doing raids in WWII. Scaaaary!

  5. Heavy solid shell, light fragile drone. by robbak · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The shell smashes the drone into tiny bits of confetti, and continues on it's merry way. Or, more likely the shell snaps off a rotor arm without noticing.

    They will not bounce off each other like billiard balls. That's what happens when you have a collision between equal mass objects in which kinetic energy is conserved. This would be a collision between different mass objects where energy is lost to work - destroying the drone. The one with the most momentum wins.

    --
    Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
  6. Re:What with all the other debris? by anubi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think what he was getting at is a firework intercepting a quadcopter will revector its trajectory.

    Someone had already planned every path the fireworks were to take, so the spent shells would not land at the wrong place.

    However, having hit a quadcopter, a live firework, its payload yet to be spent, could have its trajectory revectored to a viewing area, with likely tragic consequences.

    Someone designed that thing to go off a hundred feet up, not spuzzing around under the seats of the audience because it hit something on the way up.

    I am sure the safety of the quadcopter was the least of their worries... it is that deflected live firework that I would be worried about.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]