Originally published at: Magnificent cinematic footage of Chinese rocket exploding into fireball just 1.6-feet away from a perfect landing - Boing Boing
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I saw this footage earlier and the rocket is impressive, but very similar to the Falcon 9’s that we’re used to by now. What I’m really interested to learn more about is what kind of drones they used. Impressive that they were able to follow along as well as they did.
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I suspect that’s 1.6 meters (around 4.5 feet), not 1.6 feet.
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Popular Science article says that the rocket was reporting a “less-than-1.7-foot error between Nebula-1 and its projected landing point” just before engine shutdown, but given the video I’d say it was way off.
At ~70 feet tall, a quick-and-dirty photomeasure tool puts the base somewhere around 28 feet off the deck when it dropped.
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Welcome!
It is deceptive, isn’t it.
And if they can land it that accurately, then they just need to instal some girder-like structure that can rise up out of the ground surrounding the landing pad, in a Thunderbird-like manner.
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That looked like a not completely successful unscheduled disassembly to my uneducated eyes.
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Interesting that the shockwave didn’t destabilize the drone… (i.e. CGI)
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I would love to see this from a stationary recording. Not just for being able to see the actual rise and fall, but also because the loopy drone shots make me queasy.
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i’m surprised they don’t have people, buildings, fuel tanks, and an ecological reserve snuggled right up to the landing pad waiting to be showered with debris. why do they refuse to learn from spacex!? /s
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Obviously it flew too close to the sun— will we never learn?
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Ok but that cinematography was incredible. Like literally breathtaking. That is one hell of a drone.
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Link to the video for the BBS:
This is amazing footage – it’s so perfect that I’m not entirely convinced it’s not CGI. The real MVP here is the drone pilot.
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Rocket landings are awesome, and, IMO, do not require distract camera work to “improve” them.
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I would love to watch video of the drones in operation. The video felt AI or CGI.
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Wings melt when you’re close to the sun, but engine explodes when you’re close to the earth. Not sure what the lesson is.
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Every time I see footage of a vertical rocket landing, my brain immediately says, “Ah, it’s footage from a 1950s sci-fi movie” and refuses to see it as real.
So obviously the problem is that the string holding up the model broke.
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Oh that’s a really useful tool, I’m bookmarking that one
It would have been handy when I was measuring the tree I cut down in my parents’ garden last week. I resorted to trigonome-tree, but the photo tool got within 10cm of my result
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That’s not very typical.
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I think they meant the distance in the horizontal plane. It’s almost, but not quite, dead center on the pad.
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