Dirty Skies

Archive for the ‘Video’ Category

On Sunday NASA (quietly?) posted video of the launch of STS-121 Discovery taken from cameras mounted on the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs). These videos are in Windows Media Player 9 format. For those of you on Macs (like me) I recommend the Flip4Mac WMV plugin for Quicktime — it’s free and works well.

In the first short video clip (1.31 MB) you see the SRB separation and the shuttle pulling away… magnificent! It’s like something out of a sci-fi movie.

screenshot

In this second much longer clip (156 MB) you ride the booster from launch all the way until splashdown in the ocean!!! The whole clip runs about 11 minutes. JUST FREAKING RIDICULOUSLY BREATHTAKING!!! It doesn’t get much better than this (OK so I’m a dork).

animated screenshot

So RUN — don’t walk — over to the NASA – Space Shuttle page and check them out! They’ve also got some sweet video coverage of the last space walk.

Sounds cool eh?

I took a Digital Elevation Map (DEM) of the surface of Mars, isolated the area around Olympus Mons, and imported it into Terragen. I then created a camera script of fly over the martian volcano. Admittedly I could have done a much better job with the surface texture and the vertical scale is a little off… but you get the idea! It took 14 hours to render this on my dual 1 GHz processor Mac so it wasn’t like I could say “oops let me fix that” and buzz off another render. Next time I’ll endeavor to get the scene looking perfect BEFORE I run the job.

My intention is to do a fly-though of Valles Marineris.

Anyway, here’s Olympus_Mons_Overflight.mov (6.9 MB)

You’ll need Apple – QuickTime to view the file.

Greetings and welcome back to the “Big Rocket Show.”

12:54 PM: So far so good.

- Announcing green for all weather constraints.
- Built in 10 minute hold coming up at T-4 minutes.
- Clouds need to thin a little or the launch will be delayed while they switch to a different weather configuration.

1:04 PM: No go due to cloud ceiling limits. Looking for launch at 1:13 PM EST

1:12 PM: Looking for launch at 1:30 PM EST

- Double checking launch path area cleared of all vessels
- Waiting on weather team to make the call

1:23 PM: Looking for launch at 1:40 PM EST

1:35 PM: Set indefinite hold.

I’m seeing even more low level clouds on the webcast here of NASA TV. You guys need a pack of matches or something?!?! You’re killing me! (I jest)

1:39 PM: Load design set 29 from balloon LR6 (updated weather profile).

1:46 PM: Looking for launch at 2:00 PM EST pending resolution of low clouds.

1:50 PM: Go for launch at 2:00 PM EST. Range observers have cleared the weather issues but will continue to monitor the cloud situation in real-time.

1:53 PM: All aspects of the support team have been polled and are go to resume the count T-4.

1:56 PM: The count has resumed. 4 minutes until launch and counting.

2:00 PM: LIFT OFF!

If you missed it Watch the Launch (7.5 MB) recorded from NASA TV as it happened.

You’ll need Apple – QuickTime to view this movie file.
Images and video in this post are screen grabs from NASA TV.

If you read this post from a few days ago First Session of 2006, you’ll see I mention how one of the first things my son learned to say and identify by pointing was the Moon. I found the video we took of that night — December 26, 2003. Let me set the stage…

My wife had gone to Target (department store) and when returning to the car my one and a half year old son kept saying Moe… Moo… Moow… Moew… Mow… When she finally turned to see what he was talking about he was pointing at the Moon in the sky. To this point he had not ever pointed at anything before and since he was late to begin talking we had been kind of worried about autism and such things.

At any rate when my wife came home she called me outside and told me to bring the video camera. Maybe I’m biased (OK, I KNOW I am) but this is so cute!

You’ll need Apple – QuickTime to view this movie file.

Ryan’s Moon Movie