Canon EOS 5D
ƒ/5.6
300 mm
1/4,000
640

Bam! It felt like a concussion grenade. And I think this will be my favorite photo from the weekend.

I had never seen a P-size motor overpressure and explode on the pad. It’s 2x the size of a cruise missile booster, for a sense of scale. It twisted the launch rail into a chunk of metal and threw it through the air. Chunks of the aluminum airframe flew in all directions (I used the rental car as a shield).

But most amazingly of all, I think the white circle in the dust is the shock wave emanating out at the speed of sound.

20 responses to “Shock Wave!”

  1. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    Details are the bomb… in full size… This photo is straight from the can, with just some sky cropped off.

    Reply
  2. kirainet Avatar
    kirainet

    I found awesome details when observing the full size version. I also like the background mountain.

    Reply
  3. curiousbrandt Avatar
    curiousbrandt

    R-E-S-P-E-C-T, that’s some serious power. Great shot.

    —
    Seen on your photo stream. (?)

    Reply
  4. Head_First_Only Avatar
    Head_First_Only

    Steve, that’s pretty much your most spectacular yet. Superb job!

    Reply
  5. The Hike Guy Avatar
    The Hike Guy

    THAT’S INSANE!!!! You’ve got either a lot of guts or a lot of luck (or both) to have captured this on film. Nice!!!

    Reply
  6. TomiTapio Avatar
    TomiTapio

    It is pretty nice shrapnel.

    Reply
  7. marhawkman Avatar
    marhawkman

    Yeah, very good snap shot of the shrapnel flying in all directions. Good to know that nobody got hurt.

    Reply
  8. heet_myser Avatar
    heet_myser

    Is there a prohibition on setting up cameras a little closer to the pad and firing them remotely? Obviously, it might be a good way to lose some gear, but shots like this would be even grittier.

    Reply
  9. Tamooj Avatar
    Tamooj

    LOL – I’ll bet that not only is bringing your rental car onto the playa a violation of your rental agreement, I suspect that using the poor thing as a high-velocity fragment berm is something that’s not explicitly listed on the loss-damage-waiver. 🙂 🙂
    Glad you are safe, and this great photo is a reminder of the reason for respecting range-safety rules. I’m sure you saw this months MAKE magazine article on remote camera controls? You might wish to consider somesuch, or perhaps getting some Kevlar undies?

    PS: We are all desperately awaiting more pictures from yesterday!

    Reply
  10. Todd Huffman Avatar
    Todd Huffman

    Duck!

    Reply
  11. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    Tamooj – My hard drive filled up with the first of three cameras! I will share as I can…

    heet_myser: yes, the more professional shooters do exactly that. wide angle near the pad is awesome. Video too. Victor did one of those shots last year. Very MTV-ish. I like to wander and need to leave time to build and launch rockets myself, so I don’t use tripods at all during the day (but, wow… the night shots are even more fun, and tripod really helps there. =)

    rettro-traveller: it was a lucky reflex shot based on the visual cue. When the sound hit me, I crumpled a bit. But I kept the motor drive clicking away.

    Reply
  12. louv Avatar
    louv

    How kind of your friends to sacrifice their rocketry to entertain us with these excellent action shots!

    Reply
  13. JS3 Josh Avatar
    JS3 Josh

    holy cow.. more like an anti-personnel grenade.

    Reply
  14. Victor1 Avatar
    Victor1

    There was so much kindness in sacrifice going, we were awash in appreciation….

    Reply
  15. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    We had to force our goodness upon them…

    Here are a couple scenes from the scatter around us, once we were breathing normally again… a chunk of the launch rail and rocket body:

    Twisted Firestarter Remains

    Warnin'

    Twisted Firestarter

    Reply
  16. FrazierMtnMom Avatar
    FrazierMtnMom

    Wow. Mojave? Looks like you all put on quite the show- would be cool to see- though it does sound pretty crazy, dodging things like bowling balls hurdling back down to earth… I imagine that leaves one hell of a hole in the ground! =)

    Reply
  17. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    Oh yeah, big hole in the ground… It’s the Black Rock Desert…

    I just realized that I posted a photo with this rocket in the foreground (now we know why these rockets were on the far far away pads)…

    Hybrid R-motor Launch

    Reply
  18. sbove Avatar
    sbove

    Glad my hamster wasn’t in that nose-cone!

    Reply
  19. Ballsaway Avatar
    Ballsaway

    Steve, this was my and Guy Hardy’s rocket, I was looking for pictures of this years Balls (18) and saw this photo, glad you were ok. Just an awsome shot. On a good note we went five for five this year (09) and 20K feet, I really enjoyed the space oddity Photo you did.
    Bill Robinson

    Reply
  20. schoschie Avatar
    schoschie

    2x the size of a cruise missile booster… woah.

    Reply

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