NASA: Revolutionary Camera Recording Propulsion Data Completes Test (theverge.com) 81
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: NASA has created a camera that can film slow motion footage of booming rocket engines with higher dynamic range than ever before. It's called the High Dynamic Range Stereo X camera, or HiDyRS-X (PDF), and late last week the agency released some of its footage to the public for the first time. The three-minute clip shows the most recent test of one of the boosters for NASA's upcoming Space Launch System rocket in unprecedented detail. SLS will use two of these 17-story tall solid rocket boosters, each of which is capable of burning 5.5 tons of propellant per second to create 3.6 million pounds of thrust. The problem when it comes to filming tests like these (and eventually, launches) is that the plumes of fire they produce are extremely bright. This usually leaves camera operators with two choices. They can either expose the footage for the bright plume, which will leave everything else in the shot looking dark and underexposed. Or they can expose for everything else in the shot, which leaves the plume looking bright white and void of detail. The HiDyRS-X camera solves this problem because the camera can capture all of this detail in one shot, and it does this in a fairly clever way. Where regular high-speed cameras usually only captures video one exposure at a time, HiDyRS-X can capture multiple exposures at a time. NASA did however report some failures with the test: the camera's automatic timer failed to go off, thus failing to record the igniting of the rocket, and the pressure being generated from the booster knocked the camera's power source loose.
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Can't you just use several cameras?
My thoughts exactly.
I have a Panasonic sub-compact camera with a mixed-light setting that that takes multiple exposures of the same scene and processes them together into one properly exposed image. This NASA camera sounds like it's doing the same thing on a different lighting scale [and built to withstand rocket blasts]. I'm sure it's a useful tool for anyone working with rockets, but how news worthy is it?
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but how news worthy is it?
Its not! That's why it belongs here! You said it yourself: "built to withstand rocket blasts".
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Can't you just use several cameras?
I have a Panasonic sub-compact camera with a mixed-light setting that that takes multiple exposures of the same scene and processes them together into one properly exposed image.
In this brief PDF [nasa.gov] they do mention the innovative part, though without details sadly:
Typically, HDR images are developed using multiple cameras or multiple exposure sequencing. The game changing approach implemented here is to create high-speed HDR video imagery utilizing a single camera without time sequencing.
Camera exposure will instead be controlled at the chip/pixel level and then integrated into a high-speed video camera. The resulting HDR capability will be easier to install and operate within the SSC test stands because the entire system will be contained within a single camera; this is a completely revolutionary and innovative means to generate HDR capability with high-speed video when compared with the labor-intensive steps associated with the careful alignment required when multiple cameras are used to generate similar imaging results.
So it seems they have per-pixel exposure control, rather than a full-frame exposure control.
Not sure how that works, perhaps instead of letting the charge build up on a cell and then read all the cells after time T, they time how long each cell takes to charge, and after a cutoff time T, measure the charge of the remaining cells?
The idea being you use the time-to-saturation as a measure of brightness for over-exposed areas,
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So it seems they have per-pixel exposure control, rather than a full-frame exposure control.
Not sure how that works, perhaps instead of letting the charge build up on a cell and then read all the cells after time T, they time how long each cell takes to charge, and after a cutoff time T, measure the charge of the remaining cells?
The idea being you use the time-to-saturation as a measure of brightness for over-exposed areas, while the traditional charge level for the well-exposed areas.
First thing that popped into my mind, but then I don't really know the area so yeah... may be a very stupid idea :)
Good thinking. You sound closer to being correct than my other proposals in this thread.
Common HDR is "Video based on a per-frame variable read rate". That is, instead of 30 fps or whatever, the sensor progressively reads in a logarithmic progression of 'frame rates', on a per frame basis. For example: 0.1 ms read, 1 ms read, 10 ms read, and then a 100 ms read. HDR software processes these four sub-frames into a single HDR frame, but it is really a capture of four different time-spans.
Pixel-based expos
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speaking without any knowledge here,
wouldn't it be easier to have multiple chips capture the image at different exposures at the same time and use software to blend. is there a rule that one camera can only have one chip?
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speaking without any knowledge here,
wouldn't it be easier to have multiple chips capture the image at different exposures at the same time and use software to blend. is there a rule that one camera can only have one chip?
Sure.
Your Canon EOS has a half-silvered mirror at 45, allowing the little viewfinder to see what the optical column (lenses and film) see.
We do this with laser interferometry measurements all the time. Why not use a set of four to send the identical image to four different detectors, each with a different sensitivity (via attenuators, timing, optical-sensing device-type)?
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but how news worthy is it?
I counted three birds getting sucked into the jet stream.
A camera is NASA news now??? (Score:2)
Back in the day they shot people to the moon.
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And let's not mention the fact that they couldn't get the timer to work (!!!), so they missed the ignition, the power source was knocked off so they missed the end, and also it is kind of shaky... So not that great of a test even as far as cameras go! ;)
Meanwhile two private companies are building rockets that can land themselves...
But, yeah, who needs NASA as long as we have our drones and our F35s
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Once this camera technology makes it to the porn industry, they will use it to shoot people's moons.
This will no doubt be the rising tide that lifts all boats, from a "lighting people's undersides" perspective.
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And they had a shit tier footage of it. This is news because of the video the camera produced (which is cool to look at), not because of the camera. Dont be so grumpy grandpa.
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Adjusted for inflation, NASA's budget is less than half of what is was back then.
Not the only factor, but it's not helping y'know? If anything they get a lot more done with the money then they used to...
=Smidge=
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Even less than that. NASA doesn't use the CPI, they use the NNSI (Nasa New Start Inflation index). NNSI has a higher inflation rate than the CPI. Namely because while consumer goods have generally gone from things hand-produced and with domestic labour to things mass-produced with cheap overseas labour, NASA still predominantly builds low volumes by hand with highly trained domestic labour.
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I know right? The way I remember it, there was a clip of JFK saying lets go to the moon and then a clip of Neil Armstrong planting the flag...which probably happened within a day or so because no human's attention span could possibly last longer than that. Why NASA is wasting so much time with these boring engineering process details is beyond me. If they want to keep us entertained just engineer by tweet. You know, tweet a rocket emoji and a link to a vine of a flag waving on mars. Then we can be proud for
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They also had to develop special cameras [nasa.gov] to go with them then, too.
17 story high, how many football fields? (Score:3)
Come on, this is a science article, and you are even not able to use metric, or at least some imperial measure.
No, stories. WTF???
How many statues of Liberty is that? So I can multiply with 92.99
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The booster's height is about 1/4 furlongs or 530 hands.
TIL that "hand" is an actual unit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Many people simply can't conceive the awesome forces involved in a rocket engine especially that close to it. They are basically controlled explosions, being that close to one would burn a human to a crisp due to insane temperatures as it liquefied their organs due to intense pressures/vibrations. It takes a bit of effort to design hardware to survive that environment.
SLS would be a wonderful system to have (Score:4, Interesting)
If it were affordable. It's not, particularly at the sort of budget levels on hand. So only rarely going to be used. So it'll never have economies of scale or the refinements (including safety) that come with having a long launch record.
Everyone tries to design missions to use it, though, to try to get buy-in to their plans, knowing that due to pressure in congress they want to find excuses to use SLS as much as possible, even if financially the option doesn't make sense. Example: I was reading some of the followup work on HAVOC the other day - HAVOC being an evolutionary approach for manned missions to Venus that a couple people at Langley have been promoting. Now, when I read their initial proposal, I could tell that clearly their call for SLS to launch the airship was way overkill. The entire hull (including the envelope) is 6455kg (and they call for the transfer stages and aeroshell to be launched separately). Throw all of the other mass of the airship (not counting the separately launched return rocket), such as propulsion, helium tanks for inflation, etc, and it's still only 25772kg. Obviously you don't need SLS to launch a 26 tonne payload to LEO. They describe it instead as being volume limited due to the volume of the fabric. They have something in the ballpark of 15k m surface area. They don't give their fabric thicknesses, but the heaviest Venus balloon fabric I've ever seen proposed on any mission was VALOR's, which is somewhere around 120um thick (most are much thinner than VALOR's). Using 120um as a baseline, with a perfect packing ratio, 15k m would take up 1,8 cubic meters. Multiply it by whatever factor you want to account for imperfect packing - you'll never come anywhere close to the need of SLS's 1100 cubic meter fairing.
In their followup, they pretty much confirmed this. They did a (very) small scale folding experiment, using the fabric they were proposing, at the thickness they were proposing. It fit into their accordingly scaled-down SLS fairing. Now, clearly, if you're scaling down your fairing volume and vehicle, but you're not scaling down your fabric thickness, then you're going to end up with something that takes up vastly more volume. Yet it still fit. So clearly they don't need anywhere near all that space**
** - Caveat: I don't know if they don't understand how blimps work or what, but they have no accounting for ballonets nor catenary curtains in any documents they've released that I've come across, nor do they compensate for the former with superpressure or phase change fluids, or the latter with a rigid keel or frame. Obviously ballonets and catenary curtains also are a source of mass and volume. But again, nowhere even close to mandating SLS.
This is hardly the only case I've seen like this. It seems like it's popular to try to baseline SLS into missions to try to get support for those missions. Whether or not SLS is actually needed. They know that they can always remove the SLS requirement if/when the system gets cancelled.
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The entire program reads like a pork distribution scheme. I won't be wonderful to have at any price because it isn't designed to do anything other that spend a lot of cash in a lot of different places. The "mission objective" is irrelevant.
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Heavy lift is a nice capability... if you can afford it.
1) It's always a lot easier to integrate components on the ground rather than in space
2) You can fly with much larger fairings, which means much larger components (SLS's fairing is roughly twice as big on each axis as Falcon Heavy's)
3) In theory, going big yields per-kilogram cost savings.
Unfortunately, SLS is just inappropriate in all regards here. The amount of overhead it inherits ensures that it will never be cheap, even by a per-kilogram standard
Finally (Score:2)
Something cool posted on ./
Fluctuations look stationary? (Score:2)
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Comment removed (Score:3)
Re:Earths rotation (Score:4, Informative)
SLS rocket 1.633*10^6 kg thrus
It has about as much chance as a mosquito on an elephant's back farting changing the speed/direction of the elephant.
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With some of the propulsion methods being worked on for space travel, acceleration is very small, but happens for a very long time (usually with minimal or no on-board fuel use) to make up for it. So in the case of your farting mosquito, it's not a matter so much of how much acceleration is caused by the gaseous vacuation, but how long can the mosquito can sustain it.
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Do mosquitos fart?
Serious question!
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Ask XKCD; What If?
Re:Earths rotation (Score:4, Informative)
The rocket is going one way. The fuel is going the other. The net change in angular momentum for Earth balances that of the rocket, itself, reaching _orbit_ at high angular velocities. When it returns to ground, in a similar orbital plane and is braked by any means, that change in angular momentum is returned by the braking.
Note that if the orbits are not from similar latitudes with correspondingly similar ground velocities of the Earth's own rotation, there can be _fascinating_ effects on the eccentricity of the Earth's rotation and even on Earth's precession. But those re not likely to be large enough, or consistently cumulative enough, to be noticeable in any way.
Re: Earths rotation (Score:1)
All the momentum is spent in the atmosphere, so the net is zero.
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Very impressive footage, although I would have loved to see the initial ignition and the fadeing at the end.
What I'd also like to know is if igniting rockets such as these horizontally, with this amount of thrust, would have any measurable impact on the earths rotation at all. If not, what amount of thrust would be needed to do this?
I doubt it.
Things that do, in fact, have a measurable effect on the Earth's rotational speed are massive civil engineering projects. Stuff like: Digging lots of big, deep holes (mining). Building lots of really tall buildings. Mountaintop removal (a horrible coal-mining technique). Also in there would be a far more significant effect from melting glaciers and ice-caps, and its associated sea-level rise. (Note to trolls: Many glaciers and ice-caps are on land, not floating in the sea, so don't make an
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Very impressive footage, although I would have loved to see the initial ignition and the fadeing at the end.
What I'd also like to know is if igniting rockets such as these horizontally, with this amount of thrust, would have any measurable impact on the earths rotation at all. If not, what amount of thrust would be needed to do this?
Oh, also, "equal but opposite force" does indeed apply here. But the motion induced would likely be mostly air currents – wind. That would dissipate any theoretical "changing earth's rotation" effects.
Doing it on the Moon, however... Well, someone else can do the math and provide a % change in the moment of the atmosphere-less sphere. Infinitesimal, but perhaps measurable. For simplicity, exclude from your calculation the 'lock' between the Moon's rotation and orbit, with that of the Earth.
Yummy! (Score:1)
"capable of burning 5.5 tons of propellant per second to create 3.6 million pounds of thrust."
The unit standard salad is served.
"NASAfacts" are unfortunately rather vague (Score:4, Interesting)
The most I've found so far is the short
Note that an HDR video camera is not in and of itself particularly "revolutionary and innovative", and there's no indication of how the NASA camera might differ from existing offerings (higher frame rate? better dynamic range? more "scientific-ness!"?). But when fighting for budget the more clickbait one's research generates the easier it is to convince a politician to fund it - so everything becomes "revolutionary." (This is the science and engineering PR version of the music industry's "loudness war.")
Anyway, revolutionary or not, the rocket is big and the pictures are pretty.
"Game Changing Comment Uses Disruptive Technologies Based On Emerging Advances To Bring Revolutionary Full Stack Vacuity To Slashdot."
Re: "NASAfacts" are unfortunately rather vague (Score:1)
Read the sentence before the one you quoted. "Typically, HDR images are developed using multiple cameras or multiple exposure sequencing. The game changing approach implemented here is to create high-speed HDR video imagery utilizing a single camera without time sequencing."
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Read the sentence before the one you quoted. "Typically, HDR images are developed using multiple cameras or multiple exposure sequencing. The game changing approach implemented here is to create high-speed HDR video imagery utilizing a single camera without time sequencing."
Agreed. This was not emphasized in the article, but it's the manner in which their new HDR camera records data that is new. It does not do three sequential reads at different exposure levels, like your iPhone does. A rocket plume is fast-changing and fast-moving, so sequential reads would have time-drift error between 'equivalent' frames.
What it probably does is have either several read lines for each pixel, with different circuitry for each of the orders of exposure-level. Or, possibly, it is a super-s
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can capture multiple exposures at a time (Score:2)
Isn't this what my smartphone camera does?
I didn't RTFM but the advert seemed to indicate that it takes 3 images when I press the button, then blends them somehow to make me seem like a real photographer.
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SLS? (Score:2)
NASA surely could have come up with a better acronym than SLS (OK, the SLA could have).
The way over-cost and doomed Space Shuttle Program bore the acronym STS.
Branding-wise, that is a little bit too close.
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NASA surely could have come up with a better acronym than SLS (OK, the SLA could have).
The way over-cost and doomed Space Shuttle Program bore the acronym STS.
Branding-wise, that is a little bit too close.
If you are attempting to "sell" a program to a funding strapped congress, the block-1 SLS being derived from the STS might imply you aren't reinventing the wheel and probably the same pork is involved. Funding a similar program carries the implication that nobody getting money/contracts the last time is likely to going to go home hungry on your new program. Assuming you got enough votes last time to get funded, that's an important selling point.
If you name your program something totally different, your lo
And their mission? (Score:2)
Dear National Aeronautics and Space Administration,
More Space please.
Sincerely,
Everyone paying attention.