GoPro Footage Gives You A Rocket's-Eye View Of Spaceflight (gizmag.com) 80
Eloking quotes a report from Gizmag: Action cameras have been strapped to dogs, chainsaw-wielding drones and everything in between, but there's a new benchmark for homegrown heroes and their action-cam videos courtesy of UP Aerospace. Having strapped a GoPro HERO 4 to the outside of its SpaceLoft-10 sounding rocket, the company launched it into the thermosphere, gathering some footage that's simply out of this world along the way. The footage is incredible and begs the question: how did they fasten the cameras to a rocket traveling at 3,796 mph? You can watch the footage here on YouTube.
"begs the question"...-5 style points (Score:5, Informative)
Re: "begs the question"...-5 style points (Score:4, Informative)
No, there is only one meaning to the phrase "begs the question". What's wrong with saying "raises the question"? Those two extra letters hurt to type?
"Who's?" (Score:1)
Perhaps if people were better educated, they would care about using the language properly.
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Begging the Question
petitio principii
(also known as: assuming the initial point, assuming the answer, chicken and the egg argument, circulus in probando, circular reasoning [form of], vicious circle)
Description: Any form of argument where the conclusion is assumed in one of the premises. Many people use the phrase “begging the question” incorrectly when they use it to mean, “prompts one to ask the question”. That is NOT the correct usage. Begging the question is a form of circular
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Except nowadays everyone simply refers to the concept as "circular reasoning". Which is a much easier to parse, grammatically, than the phrase "begging the question".
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It's the beat, you know, the rhythm... It rolls off the tongue. Works better if you say it in a William F. Buckley voice.
Cameras on rockets [youtube.com]? A little less spin is easier on the eyes
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'Beg' means 'ask'.
But there are potentially *two* questions that could be referred to. Begging the question can legitimately mean
1) re-asking the question instead of answering it
2) answering the question incompletely thus inviting an obvious follow-up question.
But to answer the question... (Score:5, Funny)
how did they fasten the cameras to a rocket traveling at 3,796 mph?
I'm reasonably certain that they didn't. They attached it to the rocket while it was stationary.
Woohoo how exciting (Score:1)
Right after WWII they took footage on captured V2 rockets. This is hardly new or exciting.
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..."Only this and nothing more"...
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Good god, man. You nearly Godwinned an article about filming a rocket ascent to space, and its descent. You are tired, go home.
Really? (Score:2, Interesting)
So a rocket breack up into 4+ parts and 4 of those stay in 30 meter proximity to each other, floating in space? With the right angle for the go pro to film? ... ... To sceptical I am?
It looks cool but I though at times it looks to good to be true.
Your opinion please.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
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So a rocket break up into 4+ parts and 4 of those stay in 30 meter proximity to each other, floating in space?
What else would they do?
With the right angle for the go pro to film?
There was one shot with particularly fortuitous timing (catching the main body splitting at the right point during a rotation), but that's easily explained by the likely multiple attempts they did in order to create this GoPro ad.
Slow Motion Video (Score:2)
It looks cool but I though at times it looks to good to be true.
Actually you get a hint as to how they did it when they show a very brief clip of video at full speed in space and everything is spinning rapidly and its hard to see anything. So clearly these clips of things majestically floating there are slow motion and in reality each piece is spinning and tumbling rapidly on the edge of space before it falls back down to Earth.
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Yep. In the absence of aerodynamic forces, propulsion forces, or any other forces for that matter, what else would you expect them to do? You should go play some Kerbal Space Program so you get some better intuition about it.
What makes you think they used only one camera, or got the shot on the first try?
"Skeptical" is not a verb an
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My opinion is that they had many cameras and at least one of them captured the moment of separation.
How did they (Score:2)
manage to get them started? (wifi?) Did they have extra battery / external power source? More information please. Looks great bit TFA lacks all the REALLY interesting information. :)
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Or you watched the recent Mythbusters episode on rockets/gummi bears.
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Yes, GoPros have a smartphone app where you can control the camera and watch what it sees, as long as it's within wi-fi range. You can tap the "record" button at t-5 seconds and the camera will keep recording even when out of wi-fi range.
They can also record (IIRC) around an hour on battery - I think it depends on what resolution and frame rate you select.
Spinning (Score:1)
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How does the pilot not get sick when the rocket spins like that?
Umm ..
1) The pilot is knocked unconscious by the high launch forces, so never sees anything?
2) The pilot spends hours and hours training on a merry-go-round?
3) The pilot doesn't directly look out the window. Instead he/she watches the video after they de-spin it?
4) The pilot spent man-hours training on FPS video games?
5) or maybe because there is no pilot?
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Or in this case, when it was spinning very quickly, I'm moderately sure the video was playing in fast forward and not actually spinning all that quickly. Later in the video it stopped spinning so quickly and without any sort of engine to stop it spinning, it would have continued.
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The pilot is seated on a centrifuge rotating the opposite direction at the same rate.
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I wondered about that.
1. Wouldn't that rate of spin cause problems? I assume this rocket isn't quite as fragile as the recent Japanese satellite, which tore itself apart due to spinning at 78RPM instead of 33.
2. I thought the stabilisers/fins were there to stop that kind of thing?
Re: Spinning (Score:2)
Actually, the question **I** would like to know. . (Score:3)
. . . is not how they affixed the cameras to the rocket and RV.
What *I* would like to know is how they protected the cameras. Because the drag and heating effects of a ~3800 mph slipstream are going to be noticeable. After all, the leading edges of SR-71s expand substantially, and have been reported to glow from air-friction induced heating. . .and a Blackbird tops out at 2200 mph.
THOSE details would be far more interesting. . .
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Re: Actually, the question **I** would like to kno (Score:3, Informative)
Mostly time. Blackbird has heat expansion issues because it flies in atmosphere at 2200mph for a long time. The rocket may have peaked at 3600mph, but you only get seconds of that before the atmosphere is too thin to cause much heating.
Watch old manned launch videos and listen for the term "Max Q". That's the point where atmospheric drag is at its highest (factoring in acceleration and atmospheric density), and it's surprisingly early.
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Or watch the recent video of the Falcon 9 launch [youtube.com]. Max Q is reached about 1:24 after launch at 1900 km/h, 14km altitude. This is about the same altitude as the Apollo missions and a little bit later than the space shuttle, which reached Max Q at about 11km altitude.
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but you only get seconds of that
Maybe. On the other hand, during the development of the VT Fuse [wikipedia.org], the heating due to the shell's short flight was sufficient to melt the solder connection to the antenna in the nose cap. Until high temp solder was used.
I think the solution (as others have pointed out) is that the GoPros are mounted inside the rocket casing, looking out through high temp windows.
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What *I* would like to know is how they protected the cameras. Because the drag and heating effects of a ~3800 mph slipstream are going to be noticeable.
Not sure about the heating effect but did you notice the temperature gauge? It bottomed out at -453F. Less than 7 degrees above absolute zero. I would be highly suspect of the gopro being able to handle that low of temperature. I can't imagine the battery, the electronics, or even the plastic being able to survive that.
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I don't know how they did it, but an educated guess, based on other soun
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They put the cameras inside the rocket, pointed out a port in the side of the rocket tube. Just outside the port there is a small mirror angled at 45 degrees. The mirror is aerodynamically protected. In the shot at 1:50 in the video when two rocket sections separate you can see some of the mirror housings, they are the little blue smooth bumps sticking out the side.
A trick of the trade (Score:2)
how did they fasten the cameras to a rocket traveling at 3,796 mph?
They didn't. They used a bit of foresight and attached the camera before the launch,when it was stationary.
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You are technically correct -- the best kind of correct [quickmeme.com].
An even more exciting place to put a GoPro (Score:2)
Why does it stop spinning? (Score:2)
My question is why (how) does the rocket suddenly stop spinning at the top of it's flight?
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Let's just check (Score:2)
Hmm, ads disabled, check.
Hmm, article listed as paid story, no. So it should be safe to read - oh, wait, it's a blatant slashvertisement with a link to a GoPro ad video? Whaaat?
I love being monetized.
editing made me space sick (Score:2)
B.o.B. needs to watch this (Score:1)
That's not.... (Score:2)