The next couple of clips you're going to see are extra scenes
that effectively didn't make it into the production cut
and the reason being that we had to keep the time down to
around 45 minutes or so.
But these are long range tracking scenes
with the exception of the last one
which is a composite scene you'll see in a few moments.
But they all deserve attention
because of the significant technical achievement that's
involved with capturing these scenes, these images
that you're about to see.
Okay, the clip that you're about to see is Echo 207 and this
from Playalinda Beach Domes.
It's about 7.75 miles north
of the pad right along the beach road
within the Cape Canaveral National Seashore.
Now, this image has been inverted.
When it's captured it's actually captured upside
down to the viewer because of the type
of lens that's used to capture it.
The tracker that's capturing
and tracking this image is a dome system,
it's just an object altitude measurement system.
This is a very long focal length lens somewhere on the order
of approaching 500 inches in focal length.
Yeah, these are effectively telescopes, right?
Telescope lenses, that is correct.
And these are part of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station,
Patrick Air Force Base, range safety assets.
These trackers are used primarily
to ensure the safety of the range.
Another distinguishing feature of this image,
besides the exceptional optical quality,
is the focus is actually driven by range data to keep the image
in focus as it passes through the various distances
that you'll see here.
Yeah, it's amazing to see the absolute clarity that you get
from such a long distance away.
Take notice of the body flap.
As you can see it's vibrating
and it's just right below the space shuttles main engines
on the back of the orbiter there,
and you can see a significant vibration in that.
Of course, we knew about that in the design process.
We knew that that body flap would be undergoing that kind
of deformation, but it just sort of hints
at the enormous loads the vehicle is subject
to on the way up into space.
And actually, if you watch carefully,
you can see the vibrational mode of that for the technical people
in the viewing audience.
You'll actually see the vibrational mode of that change
as it goes through a couple
of different parts of its flight regime.
See the plume sort of expanding now if you watch the back
of the external tank underneath the engines.
You can see it's starting to brown up a little bit.
That's because of the exhaust gas recirculation coming
out of the boosters starting to heat up that foam,
that insulating foam that's on the bottom of the tank.
Nice lighting, these are STS-124 again.
Yes. Ah, so, beautiful, beautiful lighting in the Septor
in this evening sun and kind of see it here and as
with all the 124 shots, they were second to none.
And one of the advantages of the focal length that these lenses
on these dome systems provides is the capability to look at,
in many cases, SRV separation.
This clip here is Echo 204 and this is, this camera is
at Patrick Air Force Base, which is about 31 miles south
of the pad, just due south of the pad.
Again, this is like Echo 207-- is a dome system--
so it's an object attitude measurement system.
And this is a very long focal length lens approaching
between 400 and 500 inches.
I'm not sure exactly what the focal length is.
The image would be inverted and because of the design
of the lenses, it's a telescope lens system.
Yeah, it's really amazing, just like the other one we talked
about a few minutes ago.
So, the solid rocket boosters as we mentioned
in the primary production on this disk separated
about 29 miles in altitude and you have enormous detail.
I mean you can make out some of the rings on the boosters here.
It's just fantastic detail.
Were going to see SRV separation in just a few seconds.
And the boosters don't actually flame out, they just go
to a neutral thrust condition.
And once they aren't generating any thrust relative
to their mass, they obviously don't have any use anymore
for the vehicle so they jettison them via these little miniature
boosters, if you will, called booster separation motors.
And that's the big cloud you see, as they detonate these,
you'll see this big cloud that sort
of engulfs the orbiter and the tank.
And the boosters are sort of safely moved back away
from the orbiter and the tank
so there's no possible conflict or impact.
Kind of a nice shot of the plume there.
The further they get up into the vacuum
of space you see more expansion of the plume as it comes
out of the SSMEs, the space shuttle main engines,
and the boosters themselves.
So, we're gearing up for booster separation there.
You see it-- an enormous cloud of exhaust coming
out of those little separation motors.
They have four of them on the front
and the back of the booster.
And you can see that the boosters actually,
as I mentioned, don't go out: they're still burning.
There's still quite a bit of fuel on the inside
of those boosters and they will actually flame all the way back
down into the Atlantic Ocean.
They'll chug; they sort of puff on and off.
So, they sort of give you the impression they're falling back
down to Earth at this point but they actually have
about 15 more miles to go up in the air before they peak
and turn around and come back to Earth; and then they're rescued
by divers out in the Atlantic Ocean and brought back
and recycled for future missions.
This is Echo 217 and this camera is up at Appollo Beach
which is apart of the Cape Canaveral National Seashore
and this camera is about 20 miles from the pad
when the vehicle lifts off.
It's a really an amazing view.
The focal length on this camera system is about 360 inches.
It's fairly long focal length
and it's using the Kineto tracking mount
for the tracking system that keeps up with this.
So this is manually operated by the tracker operator.
Looks like we're flying through a lot of haze there
on this particular day, there's probably some clouds,
long distance as you mentioned, between the camera operator
or the camera itself and the vehicle.
And so there's a little bit of haze and you can see that,
but still an amazingly clear image.
If you look at the bottom of the tank, you can see it's starting
to flame on a little bit there, which as we mentioned
in the primary production; that this is a known phenomenon
as the hot exhaust under the boosters
and the main engines sort of re-circulates back around
and touches that tank.
And in just a little while longer,
we're going to see some booster separation shots.
And in the main video there was an image
from this particular tracking site,
but it was a high-definition video using 150-inch lens,
and this is the film companion to that.
Right, right.
There's multiple cameras--
up to four on one camera operation system--
that one operator can control.
So, if you go back and look at the,
keep track of Kevin's callouts for what camera site we're
at you can correlate that.
Great slow motion shot of the booster separating just
like the shot that we saw a moment ago.
See the boosters falling back, safely pushed away
from the orbiter and the external tank,
and on their way back to Earth.
Their total ride is 400 seconds from lift off to splash
down - it's 400 seconds.
They're actually in the water before the vehicle even gets
up into orbit.
What you're seeing here is two camera views
that are actually composited together.
Matt will talk about that more in a second.
But this is from CS6, 1200 feet.
The camera is from the vehicle,
and this is a tracker that's remotely operated by an operator
in the launch control complex using a track ball.
Yeah, what we did was we used some software to actually sort
of try to track these two images together,
to make them look more aligned with one another, if you will,
and it did a pretty good job, and that's why you see
that line moving up and down is that the key frames
that we're trying to hold together there sort
of give you an extended view or panoramic view of the vehicle
as captured by these two cameras.
You can kind of see some of the paper, by the way,
coming off there as the vehicle starts accelerating.
Those are those paper covers
that cover the reaction control motors on the vehicle.
Going into the roll program, the software kind
of looses the ability to track, you'll see it bounce
around a little bit there,
but it's actually a very beautiful shot,
and the tracking will stop in just a few moments
and the vehicle will fly out of the frame.
And I found that to be actually a particularly nice shot--
it's not seen too often in tracking.
And Kevin, you may want to mention, you know,
that this shot really only is concerned
with the first part of the launch.
Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry, Matt.
The first 18 to 20 seconds is really what this shot is
intended to be looking at as the vehicle clears the pad
and clears the tower structure about 200 to 300 feet or so.
So, this is a nice scene to end our extra features on.
We hope you enjoyed it.
Hope you enjoyed the commentary
and hope you enjoyed the production overall.
Thanks.