Rocket Reverie

14 responses to “Rocket Reverie”

1. 

   jurvetson

   Sep 1, 2010 at 4:52 am

   And here’s my spool lighting up the playa with an Aerotech Redline engine, which I forgot to include in my night launch medley video

   .

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2. 

   Happy Tinfoil Cat

   Sep 1, 2010 at 5:22 am

   After seeing your photos with the 100-400, I want it more that ever. Glad to hear you have some father-son togetherness; I don’t even see my kids for more than 5 minutes a day (if that) most days.

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3. 

   PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE

   Sep 1, 2010 at 10:16 am

   Wowww from the rocket cam video PERFECT landing !!! =)
   Funny comments on the pinkie out forum =P

   Looks like a future young rocket engineer is on the making = )
   Bravo to little Tintin J. from France !

   ————————————————-
   Have you heard of this ongoing rocketry project ?

   

   The Heat-1X , Copenhagen Suborbitals ‘ quest to develop the ultimate in personal space transportation BBC News

   Go, Randy. Go! A group of Danish rocketeers has headed out into the Baltic Sea to launch a British dummy about 30km into the sky this week. The dumb doll will sit atop the Heat-1X booster when it flies from a restricted military range, perhaps as early as Thursday.

   

   The Heat-1X is a hybrid booster – it will burn a solid polyurethane propellant with liquid oxygen. Kristian says it should achieve about 70-80 kilonewtons of thrust this week on lift-off (by comparison the Ariane 5 develops 13,000kN).

   The goal on this first flight is only to go a few tens of km, to test the systems and then move on to the next iteration.

   

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4. 

   biotron

   Sep 1, 2010 at 1:15 pm

   priceless link to pinkie chat – i think we need to see you in a tux holding a postprandial snifter to make any firm allegations 😉

   interesting link there POOQATQE!

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5. 

   solerena

   Sep 1, 2010 at 10:01 pm

   Nice light beams in the portrait and the look of excitement… as for camera goes – it is huge and all ten female fingers (pinkies included) would have to hold it and not sure would be still able to hold it still:)

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6. 

   Dr DAD (Daniel A D’Auria MD)

   Sep 1, 2010 at 11:48 pm

   There he goes setting the stage for "photo ettiquette"…..pinky out over 400mm!!! Is it a must be an acquire taste…California rather than Texas I am sure !-)

   Read a recent artilce about the Copenhagen Suborbitals….. in other words, how to travel into suborbital space in a rice cooker. I welcome innovation, but that thing just plain scares me!

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7. 

   nhr

   Sep 2, 2010 at 1:48 pm

   venettaj said:
   > i was going to say "common now..only girls are allowed this approach"

   Experienced gals know that to get a good grip on it, the pinkie should also be used

   

   

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8. 

   solerena

   Sep 2, 2010 at 5:03 pm

   Good point -venettaj 🙂
   Oh, there is a handle, lenses are monstrous… wow.
   and all female fingers are engaged…

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9. 

   jurvetson

   Sep 2, 2010 at 6:28 pm

   makes me want to get a grip!

   nhr: it just gets bigger and better… and such a comfortable experience…

   

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10. 

    jurvetson

    Sep 2, 2010 at 9:55 pm

    [so frustrating – someone deleted their comment, so this reply is hanging out there]

    Close – the longest f2.8 in the world
    $24,000
    35 lbs.
    Sigma 200-500mm F2.8 EX DG

    at the bottom of this page, you can see how it, uh, zooms.

    Any bigger, and you gotta grab on with both hands!
    Canon 1200mm 5.6L USM at $120,000 !!

    My 2300mm lens was much cheaper… and the mirror lens design is much lighter and compact….

    

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11. 

    biotron

    Sep 2, 2010 at 10:50 pm

    seeing how it, uh, zooms…

    "Cristina is a young girl from Australia that now lives in Italy; she is both a singer and a model…it has been fantastic to work with her!"

    "For this project, she returned home to her native country for these shots, while I remained stationary in Italy. See how it, uh, zooms!"

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12. 

    solerena

    Sep 3, 2010 at 12:03 am

    These huge lens are probably for the night sky, not a person – looks almost like a gun pointed at you:) it is impressive all right… though why they have to be so big if not for shooting some far away moving object, like a comet in the sky?

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13. 

    Victor1

    Sep 3, 2010 at 6:53 am

    Pinky out, like drinking a fine tea… the photos in this thread are hilarious… I’m waiting for one of the hubble… being moved by a pinky?

    Reply
14. 

    nhr

    Sep 3, 2010 at 5:32 pm

    Victor1 said:
    > I’m waiting for one of the hubble…

    The HST’s Optical Telescope is a 57600mm f/24, so it’s a fairly slow lens by photographers’ standards 😉

    Speaking of, um, more down-to-Earth, but still quite remarkable designs, here’s an interesting one:

    The Zeiss Starlith 1700i, an in-line multi-mirror catadioptric lens designed for the immersion photolithography of silicon wafers.

    Height: 1250 mm
    Max diameter: 500 mm
    Weight: 750 kilograms
    Price: in the seven digits

    Its publicized numerical aperture is 1.20. Assuming the immersion water’s refraction index is 1.33, a NA of 1.2 means that the light cone emerging from this lens has an apex half-angle of arcsin(1.2/1.33) ~= 64.5º

    As a comparison, the apex half-angle of the light cone emerging from a normal f/1.4 photographic lens is arctan(1/(1.4*2)) ~= 19.5º

    The Starlith 1700i thus produces a light cone whose aperture angle is equivalent to that of a f/0.24 photographic lens. No wonder it’s so expensive 😉

    This Zeiss lens is generally found hidden inside the ASML-brand 193nm wavelength immersion scanners used by the likes of Intel and most major chip manufacturers in the world. The resulting chips form the brains of the computers used by sites like Flickr.com 🙂

    Also note that these days, using reducing optics to project intricate light patterns onto semiconductor chips is an activity that is definitely not the preserve of white-clad technology specialists anymore 😉

    

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