Internet Video Thread

GLS · Jan 13, 2020

Urwumpe said:
Strange that nobody else posted it yet, it looks pretty accurate - and good:

N1 Rocket Launch Failures - YouTube

Well, pretty accurate might be a stretch... the third one broke apart due to excessive roll, and in the animation it just goes BOOM. :shrug: Also, the first one had the Sun in the wrong place (or the rocket was going in the wrong direction), and the SAS was fired too early on the second one (in reality the rocket was on it's way down when it fired).
Still, it got most things right, and IMO nobody else made anything like it before. :rikerclap:

Urwumpe · Jan 13, 2020

GLS said:
Well, pretty accurate might be a stretch... the third one broke apart due to excessive roll, and in the animation it just goes BOOM. :shrug: Also, the first one had the Sun in the wrong place (or the rocket was going in the wrong direction), and the SAS was fired too early on the second one (in reality the rocket was on it's way down when it fired).
Still, it got most things right, and IMO nobody else made anything like it before. :rikerclap:

I think in the second launch, the engines failed too fast, almost instantly, while in the real launch, I think they failed successively in a rather long fraction of a second. But again, he got most things right. For example on the fourth launch, he correctly added the attitude control thrusters used only on that launch to correct the roll problems that got the third one out of control. Which got out of control by the yaw maneuver conducted to prevent the massive damage of the the second launch....

Much better than a professional documentary I watched last night about Venus - which gave the surface perfect Earth-grade visibility, while in reality, you can only expect up to 3 km there.

GLS · Jan 13, 2020

Urwumpe said:
I think in the second launch, the engines failed too fast, almost instantly, while in the real launch, I think they failed successively in a rather long fraction of a second.

As the fire inside the engine section progressed around the outer engines, their wires burned and they began to shutdown, and KORD would also shutdown the opposite engine (to keep the vehicle balanced), and about half the engines were off by the time the fire eat the KORD wiring and the rest of the engines were shutdown, with the exception of nº18 (I think). I think it was Mishin who had a good drawing of sequence in his diaries.

Urwumpe · Jan 14, 2020

GLS said:
As the fire inside the engine section progressed around the outer engines, their wires burned and they began to shutdown, and KORD would also shutdown the opposite engine (to keep the vehicle balanced), and about half the engines were off by the time the fire eat the KORD wiring and the rest of the engines were shutdown, with the exception of nº18 (I think). I think it was Mishin who had a good drawing of sequence in his diaries.

Yes, I also read the section on RussianSpaceweb again, which also reported that 12 out of 30 engines failed initially and the rest terminated a moment later - except one.

4throck · Jan 14, 2020

Urwumpe said:
I think in the second launch, the engines failed too fast, almost instantly, while in the real launch, I think they failed successively in a rather long fraction of a second...

Unless you have an official report with a timeline you can't derive much from footage.
And the problem with most launch footage is that the original frame rate is unknown.
On top of that you have 24/25 fps conversion, common for Russian footage later released on video....

A report might give you some data points, but nothing to go by visually. For example, one can report and internal fire, but is it visible from the outside? How was the rocket's exhaust affected ?

My point being that this guy had no good visual sources to follow :thumbup:

GLS · Jan 14, 2020

4throck said:
For example, one can report and internal fire, but is it visible from the outside? How was the rocket's exhaust affected ?

I've seen footage from an elevated angle of the ignition on the second launch, and a flame/explosion is visible on the side of the engine section, even before it took off.

BTW, searched for the Mishin drawing I mentioned:

Urwumpe · Jan 14, 2020

4throck said:
Unless you have an official report with a timeline you can't derive much from footage.

Its like the sinking of the Titanic or the HMS Hood. No good footage, but lots of oral history and reconstructions of such.

The USSR rarely did such official investigations, most such information had been recollected much later from interviews of the people involved in the investigation (Like the Soyuz 1 accident).

(And in case of the Hood, most CGI visualizations are terribly wrong. The eyewitnesses reported a far more disconcerting event than just an exploding ship: A silent RUD.)

4throck · Jan 14, 2020

"and in case of the Hood, most CGI visualizations are terribly wrong"

Again, it's hard to animate with no visual clues. But you can always animate based on a simulation... and that's where Orbiter comes in...

Urwumpe · Jan 14, 2020

4throck said:
Again, it's hard to animate with no visual clues. But you can always animate based on a simulation... and that's where Orbiter comes in...

You could at least listen to the reports of eye witnesses, instead using video game or Michael Bay physics.

The thing is, all witnesses described the demise as eerie silent in the middle of a sea battle. No massive loud explosion, but more a giant torchlight like flame consuming the center of the ship. That is uncommon for a magazine explosion, but not impossible, especially for ships still using cordite.

Linguofreak · Jan 14, 2020

Urwumpe said:
You could at least listen to the reports of eye witnesses, instead using video game or Michael Bay physics.

The thing is, all witnesses described the demise as eerie silent in the middle of a sea battle. No massive loud explosion, but more a giant torchlight like flame consuming the center of the ship. That is uncommon for a magazine explosion, but not impossible, especially for ships still using cordite.

I've never really heard a magazine explosion or turret fire described any other way: flames as high as the mast, little or no description of the sound, and, in the case of magazine explosions, structural failure of the ship near the point where the flames are seem to originate.

And really, given the speed at which smokeless powder burns, I wouldn't expect a loud, sharp explosion. Maybe if the shell storage went up instead of the powder magazine, but high explosives tend to be relatively insensitive compared to powder: I've never heard of it happening in combat (but see USS Mt Hood for a non-combat incident).

Beyond that, very large explosions that one *would* expect to yield a good sharp crack are often reported to be silent: I've heard a number of accounts of the bombing of Hiroshima that made special note of the lack of sound.