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A day in the life of a booster rocket

Posted at 1:52 PM on May 27, 2011 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Science

NASA has released a 36-minute video of the camera on board the booster rockets attached to the space shuttle at liftoff. They separate after working for about two-and-a-half minutes. ~~so they can't be up that high, right? It takes them 34 minutes to fall back to earth, the video reveals.~~ (Check out the spot at 2:38, a second or two after it separates form the shuttle, the bright spot shows the shuttle, already a long way away.)

Comments (5)

I saw the splashdown at a bit less than 7 minutes after launch -- Was that edited?

Posted by Michael | May 27, 2011 2:09 PM

That's a great question, Michael. Must've been. NASA doesn't say.

So you were there? You're living my dream, man.

Posted by Bob Collins | May 27, 2011 2:26 PM

The SRBs take around 5 minutes to fall back. The reason the video is so long is you get to see the accent and return from multiple camera angles.

Posted by Matt B | May 27, 2011 2:30 PM

Only "I saw" with respect to the video... Only wish I had been there.

Posted by Michael | May 27, 2011 3:14 PM

Thanks, Bob! Very interesting. Way at the end (I cheated and fast-forwarded through most of the falling scenes) there is a good shot showing that one of the 3 chutes ripped apart.

I was impressed with how the chutes opened in stages. I know why they do that (to reduce trauma to the chutes from too much force too quickly) but I couldn't really see HOW they did it.

Also, it looks like they jettison something from the business end of the SRB just before splashdown. What and why?

Posted by Paul J | May 27, 2011 5:07 PM