Houston we have ignition

December 12, 2010 5:49 AM

Blastoff! SLYT slow motion shuttle liftoff. (Up to 60,000 frames per second)
posted by troll on a pony (25 comments total)

Saw this yesterday. Freakin' amazing.
posted by Mcable at 5:54 AM on December 12, 2010

I rolled my eyes when I saw that this is 45 minutes long, but as soon as I got to 2:40 I realized that I'm definitely going to watch the whole thing as soon as I can.
posted by TurkishGolds at 6:25 AM on December 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

Beautiful. See also the Saturn V's take on this. It boggles my mind that NASA creates so much gorgeous video and yet their youtube channel is mostly over-narrated puff pieces. Stick the raw footage up there guys!
posted by Skorgu at 6:35 AM on December 12, 2010 [3 favorites]

Fantastic! Hope he gets the high-res version up there sometime.

It boggles my mind that NASA creates so much gorgeous video and yet their youtube channel is mostly over-narrated puff pieces. Stick the raw footage up there guys!

I can't really add much to that.
posted by TedW at 6:44 AM on December 12, 2010

Pretty spectacular. Love the candid commentary - it brings it home that it's a massive human effort. As Skorgu said, I'd much rather see the unpolished presentation behind the scenes. Great post, thank you. Off to explore the other links.
posted by yoga at 6:46 AM on December 12, 2010

This is the bonus track that's mentioned and I'm fairly sure this is the DOAMS camera/telescope thing they refer to.
posted by Skorgu at 7:54 AM on December 12, 2010

Still the most complex machine ever built by man -- some 30 years after its first flight. Incredible footage.
posted by VicNebulous at 7:54 AM on December 12, 2010

I was listening to music, so started the video without sound. And it's absolutely gorgeous without any narration to it.
posted by bjrn at 8:03 AM on December 12, 2010

Yeah, for those of you that feel it's too long, it is well worth your time...

the shot at 30:54 is just fantastic.

Thanks!
posted by HuronBob at 8:42 AM on December 12, 2010

Incredible Force.
posted by Israel Tucker at 8:44 AM on December 12, 2010

This made me think about what effort it takes for humans to get in to space. The effort is amazingly huge. That incredible story seems to get lost in a 10 second blurb on the nightly news, shoe-horned in between what antics Lindsay Lohan is up to and the latest political nonsense.
posted by Increase at 9:06 AM on December 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

That was incredible.
posted by Acey at 9:47 AM on December 12, 2010

I’m at 14:26 and I could spend all day watching this.

Thank you, troll on a pony.
posted by mistersquid at 9:55 AM on December 12, 2010

Amazing. Hypnotic.

I want to see a night launch get this treatment.
posted by Capt. Renault at 9:59 AM on December 12, 2010

Is whitey still on the moon?
posted by punkfloyd at 10:52 AM on December 12, 2010

Why Capt. Renault? Because it would look like this?!
posted by lucidprose at 11:28 AM on December 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

That was awesome. Thank you, troll on a pony!
posted by interrobang at 11:39 AM on December 12, 2010

I watched about 10 minutes of it (busy, limited Internet speed)... awesome stuff. I started wondering about the "hold-down" bolts. Is there anything about that? I find it amazing that there's these clamps that keep the whole thing from toppling over, yet they HAVE to fire explosively at the right second. I can't imagine what happens if there's a misfire and the bolt doesn't release. I tried Googling around and found very little about this. I'd imagine this video would have to have something about that.
posted by crapmatic at 11:51 AM on December 12, 2010

find it amazing that there's these clamps that keep the whole thing from toppling over, yet they HAVE to fire explosively at the right second.

crapmatic, a bit of research reveals this is known as a "stud hang-up". When the timing of the pyros are off by even a fraction of a second (which happens occasionally) the bolts gouge a handful of metal out of the bolt hole. But it's thought that even if all the bolts failed to fire, the SRBs would still eventually win -- but there would be a lot of weird torques and damaged metal, so it's best that things work properly.

And I learned a new world: "frangible" :)
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 12:25 PM on December 12, 2010

Magnificent. I too looked at the length and thought, "I'll just check out the beginning..." but there was no way I could stop! Thanks.
posted by findango at 2:04 PM on December 12, 2010

How is this not available in either 1080p or 4K?? Gah!
posted by disillusioned at 2:08 PM on December 12, 2010

Lovely, thank you for posting this.
posted by Quietgal at 3:00 PM on December 12, 2010

I WAS AT THIS LAUNCH!

I saw it from the Kennedy Space Center (about 6 miles away -- not the best place to view a shuttle launch, btw) not long after I moved to Florida. Even from there, it was spectacular. If you've never seen a shuttle launch, it is baright! Even in the broad daylight, it was almost as bright as the Sun. I happened to be standing in front of a restaurant with a big plate glass window, and when the sound hit, the window started undulating. It was easily one of the coolest things I ever saw (the whole launch, not the window thing).
posted by dirigibleman at 4:28 PM on December 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

OFFBLAST!
posted by joecacti at 4:41 PM on December 12, 2010

I poked around a bit and it appears that it's really this guy's YouTube account, and he made it with a few friends. Am I correct about this?

In reply to a YouTube comment, he reveals that he works at NASA and got it from a friend of a friend.

Please let this be the only time I ever link to a YouTube comment.
posted by grouse at 7:54 AM on December 15, 2010