Space Shuttle Time Lapse (Hangar to Launch)

http://jaretmanuel.com/space-shuttle-time-lapse-movie-via-dan

by JaretManuel • 16 years ago

65 36 16 years ago

rglovejoy• 16 years ago

Excellent video! Some music would have been a nice accompaniment. Perhaps something light and fun like Vivaldi's Spring or Copland's Rodeo.

JaretManuel3• 16 years ago

Great point. Maybe you should get on that :) If you do, please inform me. Thanks.

Sukotto• 16 years ago

Please no. If I want music, I'll play my own.

ugh3• 16 years ago

It’s pretty obvious that the Vehicle Assembly Building [1] wasn’t built for something as – uhm – small as the Space Shuttle :)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_Assembly_Building

junklight2• 16 years ago

was watching thinking "ho hum".

Until the crane lifted the space shuttle. That is one serious crane. Like you say - the shuttle is kind of swamped by that shed.

That is some heavy duty machinery they have there

tricky2• 16 years ago

yeah, i was all proud of myself for hosting a new engine in my car last weekend and getting everything lined up and bolted together. Thought it was an impressive feat. Now, not so much.

hugh35• 16 years ago

If you think that's a serious crane, check out this bastard:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taisun

The space shuttle orbiter weighs 109 tons. The Taisun can lift twenty thousand tons.

rbanffy5• 16 years ago

I always wondered if it would be possible to take the SSMEs out of the shuttle and mount it on top of a larger booster vehicle that could also be used to lift non-reusable craft.

A couple of SSME-class engines on the bottom of that tank, with two or four SRBs around it would make for a very serious launcher. BTW, that's the idea behind the Jupiter boosters the DIRECT folks were proposing.

quux• 16 years ago

IIRC Nasa seriously investigated building a vehicle like this, but found that SSMEs were way too expensive for use in a disposable rocket. There are other engines that will do the job and are much cheaper.

hugh35• 16 years ago

The Vehicle Assembly Building is an amazing sight, but is it also an example of how infinite budgets lead to non-optimal solutions?

SpaceX, who tend to be a lot more budget-conscious, assemble their rockets lying down and then hoist them to vertical, thusly:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrAr4ovtf9Q&feature=relat...

That seems a lot easier and cheaper. I'm tempted to think that maybe there's some factor that makes it more difficult to engineer a rocket that can handle sideways stresses as well as vertical stresses, but... heck, it's a rocket, they shouldn't be that fragile, should they?

gambling8nt3• 16 years ago

The launch vehicles themselves may not be that fragile, but payloads often are. Multimillion-dollar satellites can be damaged or completely non-functional from effects as small as being dropped 1 meter (see http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/2230 , for example).

rbanffy5• 16 years ago

IIRC Russian rockets are also taken lying down to the launch platform and are rotated into vertical position. You can see a couple pictures of that happening at

http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2007/11/rare-photos-of-russi...

http://www.energia.ru/english/energia/launchers/vehicle_n1-l...

hernan7• 16 years ago

Sorry to nitpick, but:

Hanger: http://www.google.com/images?q=hanger

Hangar: http://www.google.com/images?q=hangar

hugh35• 16 years ago

And if anyone else was wondering, as I just was, why it's called a hangar, apparently it's from a word for "shed" in some dialect of French. The word itself is probably Germanic in origin.

And it has absolutely nothing to do with hanging, which makes sense because you don't hang things in a hangar anyway.

ugh3• 16 years ago

It’s from “Haim” and “gard”. “Haim” means basically house (and the word “Heim” for “Home” still exists in German) and “gard” means something like garden or protected area.

JaretManuel3• 16 years ago

No need to be sorry. It was my screw up. I fixed on my post but I am not able (that I know of) to fix the Hacker News Submit. /Nit Pick away as it is my bad! Thanks.

zwieback2• 16 years ago

I did notice that throughout the clip a lot of guys were just standing around chatting with their hands in their pockets.

commieneko2• 16 years ago

Great time lapse movie. No, really great. Made my day.

But... It would have been even _better_ if it had used _The Blue Danube_ for background music. Especially as it was being hoisted on the crane.

Edit: I just tried this by finding a _Blue Danube_ movie on Youtube and playing it in the background while re-watching the movie. It should be a _crime_ not to try this. Some interesting serendipities in timing, especially involving violin solos and the cable top shot sequence.

I'll try _Dark Side of the Moon_ next...

JaretManuel3• 16 years ago

If you do Dark Side of the Moon please, send it. Awesome call.

commieneko2• 16 years ago

For references and historical purposes...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpvOUnz4T7Q

_fool• 16 years ago

if for you as for me the video never actually loaded (VIDEO AVAILABLE SOON), i believe this to be the same video, which loaded instantly for me:

http://www.airspacemag.com/multimedia/videos/Go-For-Launch.h...

Space Shuttle Time Lapse (Hangar to Launch)

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