8 ms·

How to Land the Space Shuttle from Space [video]

116 points by cyrusmg 10y ago

dingaling 10y ago
Accordingly Shuttle pilots and commanders are honorary members of the WWII Glider Pilots' Association. Mach 14 or 80 knots, it's the same principle!
- mikeash 10y ago
  In the soaring community, we sometimes refer to the Shuttle as the world's highest performance motorglider. The power-off glide ratio is absolutely atrocious, though.
tonylemesmer 10y ago
TLDR seriously impressive stats given in an engaging, amusing, rapid fire talk by Bret Copeland, pilot
satysin 10y ago
That guy is a very good presenter IMHO. Amusing but not overly so, engaging and made great use of visuals.
- burnbabyburn 10y ago
  yeah but the camera guy could have done a better job, I got motion sickness.
  - funnyfacts365 10y ago
    You should complain to Steve.
  - _archon_ 10y ago
    I feel like the rotation clamp was too firm, and perhaps the camera could have had a mass on a torque arm to give it more angular inertia. This was SUPER distracting early in the presentation before the presenter was scaled down.
    - funnyfacts365 10y ago
      The video description says it was the autofocus...
- creo 10y ago
  IMHO he is too aggressive ... i cant focus on what he talks about, most of the presentation.
joekrill 10y ago
This was great! I love coming across great, short talks like this that elaborate on a very interesting problem that laypeople like myself would never otherwise have even known existed.
danbruc 10y ago
What surprised me the most, the difference between being in orbit and starting to reenter is only 362 km/h but it takes a three minute burn to decelerate which I guess is a 0.5mv² thing with big m and huge v. EDIT: My intuition was wrong, this has nothing to do with a large kinetic energy due to a large velocity.
- mikeash 10y ago
  The reentry burn is done with the teeny little OMS engines rather than the big main engines. If you look at the back of the Shuttle (such as https://i0.wp.com/amazingstoriesmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Space-shuttle-main-and-OMS-engines_a.jpg https://i0.wp.com/amazingstoriesmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2...), the OMS engines are the two little ones in the upper corners. Once you're in orbit, there's usually no hurry to make changes, so you don't need much acceleration. For getting to orbit, you want to stop fighting gravity as fast as possible, so powerful engines are a must.
  - danbruc 10y ago
    Tiny is pretty relative [1]. I expected them to be more powerful and - mistakenly - thought the small acceleration is due to the large kinetic energy due to the large velocity. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AJ10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AJ10
    - mikeash 10y ago
      Right, rockets provide the same acceleration regardless of speed, since there's no way for the engine to "know" how fast the vehicle is moving. Acceleration is basically exhaust velocity times mass flow divided by vehicle mass. With an 84cm diameter and weighing about 200 pounds, I'm OK calling them "tiny."
      - danbruc 10y ago
        I missed that, I only looked at the image and there it looks way more massive and larger than what the dimensions table says. Even taking into account that the image depicts an entire stage and not just the engine, 0.84 m and 100 kg is a lot less than I would have expected or guessed based on the image.
azdle 10y ago
If I wanted to make a presentation like that what tools would I need to use? That was way more engaging than a powerpoint presentation. It almost seems like an animated video that pauses itself rather than a slideshow.
- hugs 10y ago
  He lists the tools he used in the YouTube description of the video: "All real-life photos and videos (except the last slide) were produced by NASA. Everything that looks hand-drawn was done by me on a Wacom Intuos Pro tablet in ArtRage. Animations were done in After Effects. Between the concept, outline, script, artwork, animations, rehearsals, and editing, I spent somewhere around 200 hours over two months working on it."
- jedimastert 10y ago
  It really is just a series of animations. It's basically a time lapse of drawing. You can look at how Henry from MinutePhysics does his videos[1] (and if you like how this presentation is done, I highly recommend looking into MinutePhysics). These were probably done in something similar to flash. For open source programs, I'd probably look at Synfig[2] or Pencil2D[3]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhZ3naSgJg4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhZ3naSgJg4 [2] http://synfig.org/ http://synfig.org/ [3] https://www.pencil2d.org/ https://www.pencil2d.org/

116 points by cyrusmg 10y ago

Accordingly Shuttle pilots and commanders are honorary members of the WWII Glider Pilots' Association. Mach 14 or 80 knots, it's the same principle!

mikeash 10y ago
In the soaring community, we sometimes refer to the Shuttle as the world's highest performance motorglider. The power-off glide ratio is absolutely atrocious, though.

tonylemesmer 10y ago

TLDR seriously impressive stats given in an engaging, amusing, rapid fire talk by Bret Copeland, pilot

satysin 10y ago

That guy is a very good presenter IMHO. Amusing but not overly so, engaging and made great use of visuals.

burnbabyburn 10y ago
yeah but the camera guy could have done a better job, I got motion sickness.
- funnyfacts365 10y ago
  You should complain to Steve.
- _archon_ 10y ago
  I feel like the rotation clamp was too firm, and perhaps the camera could have had a mass on a torque arm to give it more angular inertia. This was SUPER distracting early in the presentation before the presenter was scaled down.
  - funnyfacts365 10y ago
    The video description says it was the autofocus...
creo 10y ago
IMHO he is too aggressive ... i cant focus on what he talks about, most of the presentation.

joekrill 10y ago

This was great! I love coming across great, short talks like this that elaborate on a very interesting problem that laypeople like myself would never otherwise have even known existed.

danbruc 10y ago

What surprised me the most, the difference between being in orbit and starting to reenter is only 362 km/h but it takes a three minute burn to decelerate which I guess is a 0.5mv² thing with big m and huge v. EDIT: My intuition was wrong, this has nothing to do with a large kinetic energy due to a large velocity.

mikeash 10y ago
The reentry burn is done with the teeny little OMS engines rather than the big main engines. If you look at the back of the Shuttle (such as https://i0.wp.com/amazingstoriesmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Space-shuttle-main-and-OMS-engines_a.jpg https://i0.wp.com/amazingstoriesmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2...), the OMS engines are the two little ones in the upper corners. Once you're in orbit, there's usually no hurry to make changes, so you don't need much acceleration. For getting to orbit, you want to stop fighting gravity as fast as possible, so powerful engines are a must.
- danbruc 10y ago
  Tiny is pretty relative [1]. I expected them to be more powerful and - mistakenly - thought the small acceleration is due to the large kinetic energy due to the large velocity. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AJ10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AJ10
  - mikeash 10y ago
    Right, rockets provide the same acceleration regardless of speed, since there's no way for the engine to "know" how fast the vehicle is moving. Acceleration is basically exhaust velocity times mass flow divided by vehicle mass. With an 84cm diameter and weighing about 200 pounds, I'm OK calling them "tiny."
    - danbruc 10y ago
      I missed that, I only looked at the image and there it looks way more massive and larger than what the dimensions table says. Even taking into account that the image depicts an entire stage and not just the engine, 0.84 m and 100 kg is a lot less than I would have expected or guessed based on the image.

azdle 10y ago

If I wanted to make a presentation like that what tools would I need to use? That was way more engaging than a powerpoint presentation. It almost seems like an animated video that pauses itself rather than a slideshow.

hugs 10y ago
He lists the tools he used in the YouTube description of the video: "All real-life photos and videos (except the last slide) were produced by NASA. Everything that looks hand-drawn was done by me on a Wacom Intuos Pro tablet in ArtRage. Animations were done in After Effects. Between the concept, outline, script, artwork, animations, rehearsals, and editing, I spent somewhere around 200 hours over two months working on it."
jedimastert 10y ago
It really is just a series of animations. It's basically a time lapse of drawing. You can look at how Henry from MinutePhysics does his videos[1] (and if you like how this presentation is done, I highly recommend looking into MinutePhysics). These were probably done in something similar to flash. For open source programs, I'd probably look at Synfig[2] or Pencil2D[3]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhZ3naSgJg4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhZ3naSgJg4 [2] http://synfig.org/ http://synfig.org/ [3] https://www.pencil2d.org/ https://www.pencil2d.org/