sjurvetson
Posts by this author
June 26, 2009
As I prepare to hand off this photoblog to Cobalt123, I thought I would share my favorite non-rocket photos. Each clicks through to a story or geeky observation.
Last Thoughts
Magic Toes
Fire & Ice
A Beautiful Computation
in the Wolfram sense
Curiosity
Diamond Age & Eyes
and even some…
June 25, 2009
The Shuttle is glorious after midnight awaiting a big adventure...
A complicated design...
Lifts with a thunderous roar...
SRB Separation is visible to the naked eye... and the payload joins the ISS...
As the Shuttle is retiring from operation, SpaceX is gearing up to service the space station…
June 24, 2009
Alluring, enticing, begging us to come pay a visit...
Like a moth to the flame, before there were flames...
Reflecting our reflections...
and echoing in the dreams of Neil Armstrong...
June 23, 2009
For my last rocket-centric post, let me show the big project that I helped with, from a new prefecture for civilian space explorers, called Rocket Mavericks....
She lept off the pad with a glorious 30 ft. plume.
Computer simulations estimated she would scream to 100,000 ft. at Mach 3
⢠22 ft.…
June 21, 2009
Drag races add a bit to all of the excitement, not only for their competitive elements, but also because the action fills the skies, sometimes with mishap.
This Great Gizmo drag race was sponsored by Wildman Rocketry at LDRS27 in Argonia, Kansas, with each flying the same kit:
It's a rare treat to…
June 17, 2009
The pop of a supersonic shred, scattering fins below...
and the beginning of a sparky spiral dance in the sky...
Here's a rare catch of a fleeting midair moment - the forward retention for the solid-fuel motor has failed and so it thusts forward up through the rocket, pushing the parachute and…
June 14, 2009
Near the ground we call them land sharks:
My rocket buddy Erik and I have developed a knack for spotting a likely train wreck in the sky. There was a certain lack of craftsmanship in this Sonotube build that cued us to be ready with the camera:
I just held the motor drive down for this one...…
June 12, 2009
Ka-pow. Bing, Bam, Boom.
For launch shots, I shoot with timing priority at 1/3000 seconds or faster to catch the action. This helps freeze the shrapnel in sharp focus. Typically, I am tracking the rocket by hand with a 400mm zoom.
Rockets bursting in air... In this example, a home-brew motor…
June 8, 2009
And now for something completely different... Pirate flags are the first sign...
Team Numb comfortably launched a fat rocket on a P7000 motor to loft a full beer keg over a mile high straight up.
⢠Keg: 175 lbs of beer. Roots. From Oregon.
⢠Motor: 60 lbs of Alumaflame solid rocket…
June 5, 2009
Looking Outward
With a big enough airframe, the camera can be inside looking out, or bouncing off a 45° mirror, or both. For my Level 3 Certification, I buily a 7.5" diameter GLR Sledgehammer and fiberglassed it for strength:
I simulate the flights before launch, and compare the actual…
June 3, 2009
Part 1 - Looking Down with a Strap-on Videocamera
I fiberglassed half of a plastic Easter Egg as the nose cone for an Oregon Scientific action cam, so it can be a strap-on on various rockets:
One of my goals has been to capture another rocket launching up after me as a chaser:
And sometimes you…
May 31, 2009
The long exposure presents all kinds of interesting visuals, from simple Estes propellant grains showering down...
...to the errant path of an unstable rocket:
Here's another example of an unstable flight followed by the fiery forward spray of a motor closure failure under pressure:
And…
May 29, 2009
For those of you near Silicon Valley this weekend, Maker Faire is a cornucopia of geek delights and sights.
And if you want to learn rocketry 101, the local rocket club - LUNAR, which happens to be the largest in America - will be running workshops throughout the weekend where you can build and…
May 26, 2009
Gene Nowaczyk is aiming for the big prize - a successful launch to 100,000 ft. After 50 hours/week over two years, he drove his custom airframe from Missouri in a huge truck.
Here is prepping the upper section, packed with electronics. He put an incredible amount of work and craftsmanship into…
May 25, 2009
A pair of Army scale rockets line up in the desert...
Five sparky research motors clustered together (four M's and an O) in the Little John give quite a show:
and then a another Deep sub-woofer blastoff with a cluster of five AMW motors. Jack's Nike Smoke is 19 ft. tall, and 422 lbs.
(lots of…
May 22, 2009
Richard Hagen's rocket, flying on a Aerotech J500G motor, created a wonderful night light over the Black Rock Desert playa.
With some of the night photos, there are random RGB pixels; digital astronomy photography becomes an exercise in the statistics of noise. The high-end photographers liquid…
May 21, 2009
Beyond the thrust curve, there is an art to the color of the propellant (achieved through special metal salt additives).
My 9 ft tall Sledgehammer, lifting off on a M1550 Redline motor from Aerotech, one of my favorite photos:
The shadow of dusk in the foreground really lets the color pop. The…
May 19, 2009
Kids at the candy shop... from the DairyAire launch event this weekend. For a sense of how the photonic Ritalin works, this is what my rocket looks like as an example:
For a while, I've wanted to use a funky armored car fisheye lens from Belarus for night rocketry. I tested it at dusk:
and at…
May 17, 2009
It was hot at the Dairy Aire launch this weekend. 103°F, with cows.
What weather forecast is that? The cattle packed into the nearby Harris Ranch pens literally create local fog as they sweat into dusk. Mix with a little methane, and you get Dairy Aire.
Here was one of my favorite shots... 2.25…
May 15, 2009
I was asked to give a three minute talk at the TED conference to try to convey some of the excitement about the hobby. I should have just quoted Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen:
"In terms of sheer coolness, few things beat rocketry."
Instead, I put together a photo montage, and commented on the…
May 14, 2009
I'll be launching this rocket again on Saturday... well, the upper half of it, which survived unscathed from this dramatic motor rupture a half-mile up in the moonlit sky of the Black Rock Desert:
I just love night launches as you can get a time-lapse capture of the entire rocket flight,…
May 13, 2009
Estes is the major brand in low power rocketry, with Quest as an alternative. If you launched rockets as a kid, it was probably Estes. They make black powder motors in cardboard cases. As I have moved on to the bigger projects, the only lingering reason to consider these motors is that you can…
May 12, 2009
I am still collecting topic ideas from the prior post, but several people asked how to get started in rocketry, and what is legal in the local neighborhood. Well, if there is no fire involved, it is probably OK, and so the air, water and baking soda+vinegar rockets are probably fine in just about…
May 11, 2009
As the sun sets on a wonderful set of insect photos from the Wild...
I thought I should start with a transition photo, on a photosynthetic bug bed, to a new photo theme - rockets:
Many insects have served as brave cosmonauts - flying as a somewhat unwilling payload in Estes rockets. The National…