High Power RocketCam Videos 264
HaveNoMouth writes "What happens when the founder of Xircom and his brother bolt a DV Camcorder to the side of a 200 lb. model rocket and press the red button? The incredible movies (with sound!) at Gates Bros. Rocketry tell the tale. The quality of these movies is by far the best I've seen from the "strap a camera to a flying toy" community. They have a nice gallery of still photos too.
If only everyone named Gates did stuff this cool."
Re:That's Interesting! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:And people say the moon was a hoax! (Score:1, Informative)
Yes you do. You can't legally launch things up randomly in the sky. Hitting a plane at the present time would brand you as a terrorist. The difference is that space angencies "owns" their portion of the sky.
Re:That's Interesting! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Question... (Score:5, Informative)
More info? The leading organization is www.tripoli.org.
Google cache (Score:1, Informative)
http://216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:FfdE9ICFkdQC
But the movies are not cached... so you must wait until the slashdot effect passes...
Re:How did they keep that thing balanced? (Score:5, Informative)
Mirror of photos (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Anybody get a mirror? slashdot should offer! (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Question... (Score:3, Informative)
A few years ago my friend bought a model Rocket from Beatties (a toy shop). We went down to a local park which was deserted. Just as we were about to set it up for the third launch we were approached by a local Bobby who told us to stop immediately.
Just found [a href="http://www.gbnet.net/orgs/staar/legal.html"
Re:Are you nuts? (Score:3, Informative)
SiN had this, as did Tribes (Score:3, Informative)
There was also a Tribes 1 mod that allowed you to deploy a base station which you could load with various missle types (my favorite was the one that exploded in poison gas) and then fly them around the map. You had to put them on the ground or on a structure, and you could only carry one missle ata time, so they had to be near an inventory station. My brother and I found a bug which allowed you to delpoy them on these floating, mid-air platforms with inventory stations. He'd fly a bomber waaaay up into the sky, I'd jump out, deploy the platform, fall to my death. He'd fly above the platform, jump out onto it, then set up a transporter. I'd respawn in the base, set up the other transporter, and wind up on the base in the sky. Then we'd set up missle stations and fly around destroying things. The best was when you had a missle in the air and you saw a scout car (really fast one-man vehicles). They were the same speed as the missles (except for one type) and catching them was a challenge. Occasionally, we'd get three people flying missles around. It took about 4 minutes to gain air superiority over most of the map. It took about 8 minutes for the other team to find our base in the sky and blow it up (or try, we'd defend it pretty well).
Anyway, flying missles around is great in CTF-type FPS games, especially when they have ultra-large, indoor/outdoor maps like in Tribes -- it gives the game a "Gulf War" flavor.
-B
It has also been done with Low Power Rocketry (Score:2, Informative)
www.videorocketry.com [videorocketry.com]
(videos available Here [dph.com])
One prime candidate for a low power camera is the discontinued Intel Play Digital Movie Creator [intel.com]. You record video onto a chip and upload to your PC via USB. I believe I saw this camera resurface at Toys R Us under the manufacturer name "Digital Blue". Anyone?
Here is an example of the Intel camera at work in an off-the-shelf Estes rocket with a payload bay added [dph.com]
And here is a rocket with Gumby as the pilot [dph.com].