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Deep Blue Nebula One's almost landing

Darat

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Darat
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Watch Nebula One's almost perfect vertical landing...

https://boingboing.net/2024/09/25/m...ust-1-6-feet-away-from-a-perfect-landing.html

Private Chinese space firm Deep Blue Aerospace launched is Nebula 1 last weekend and captured the cinematic video below of the mission. You can watch the entire 172 second flight, from its liftoff in Inner Mongolia to its return to Earth to, um, the massive explosion when its engine accidentally shut off just 1.6-feet above the launchpad. The result was kaboom.
Click to expand...

It's 2 minutes and I really recommend watching it as entertainment even if you aren't that interested in rocketry as the photography of the launch and the almost landing is superb.


It's linked to in the article - this is linked direct to the YouTube video.
 
is this real?

I am mostly amazed by the drone performance and control by its operator.
I would have expected more shaking as the the rocket was setting down, kicking up dust.
 
Beautifully shot. The perfection of the picture and its coming from China makes me wonder if it's CGI. But then the last part happens. I don't think they'd promote an error.
 
alfaniner said:
Beautifully shot. The perfection of the picture and its coming from China makes me wonder if it's CGI. But then the last part happens. I don't think they'd promote an error.
Click to expand...

It looked to me like the engine basically cut off when it was hovering, so that it just fell that last bit, and the legs couldn't really handle the drop. I think the stuff that went flying was pieces of the rocket nozzle that smashed against the ground. So I'm wondering whether the cutoff was intentional (testing the legs?), whether it ran out of fuel prematurely, or what.
 
Ziggurat said:
It looked to me like the engine basically cut off when it was hovering, so that it just fell that last bit, and the legs couldn't really handle the drop. I think the stuff that went flying was pieces of the rocket nozzle that smashed against the ground. So I'm wondering whether the cutoff was intentional (testing the legs?), whether it ran out of fuel prematurely, or what.
Click to expand...

According to the article:
"After the test, a preliminary retrospective analysis of the test process data revealed that during the final landing and shutdown section, the engine thrust servo follow-up control command was abnormal, causing the rocket body's landing height to exceed the design range and the rocket body to be partially damaged," the company stated in a post-mission report.​
(The post-mission report is linked in the article.)

From this I gather that the shutoff was part of the landing sequence, but happened too early for some reason. Altimeter error, maybe?
 
alfaniner said:
Beautifully shot. The perfection of the picture and its coming from China makes me wonder if it's CGI. But then the last part happens. I don't think they'd promote an error.
Click to expand...


The drone work seems possible, look up "drone acrobatics" on Youtube. But I think they used filters or something to touch up and smooth the texture of the video and that pushed it a bit into the uncanny valley.

They might have felt that they couldn't hide the loss of the rocket, it would show up in satellite imagery just like the recent loss of a Russian test rocket. So they might as well show that it was close.
 
No wonder it malfunctioned! As the video clearly shows, ten seconds into the flight it hit the sun!
 
"private space firm"? In Communist China!

Poor Marx must be rotating in his grave at near light speed.

:D:D:D
 
The Great Zaganza said:
is this real?

I am mostly amazed by the drone performance and control by its operator.
I would have expected more shaking as the the rocket was setting down, kicking up dust.
Click to expand...

alfaniner said:
Beautifully shot. The perfection of the picture and its coming from China makes me wonder if it's CGI. But then the last part happens. I don't think they'd promote an error.
Click to expand...

I wondered if it was real too. Maybe it’s sped up and that’s why it looks like a video game. The drone that shot that video must be pretty amazing.
 
If this is their first attempt at landing then I think they have done well. How many attempts did Space X have before they had a similar successful landing?
 
Yeah, I got a little airsick too. I have no shortage of video of rockets crashing and exploding. It's an occupational by-product. I'm very, very jaded on the picture of locked-down engineering analysis cameras that work very hard to keep the interesting events in frame. It's just really refreshing to see a theatrical presentation of a rocket test flight. Space is cool again.
 
Impressive OP.
The problem with Chinese space program: it keeps falling on or near people.

There are improvements though.
 
I'm curious to try watching that landing video on my VR headset but I'd probably wind up either falling over or hurling.
 
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