IPhone 4 films final Discovery launch from 30,000 feet up. | Hacker News Reader

IPhone 4 films final Discovery launch from 30,000 feet up.

thebln.com

142 pointsmarklittlewood43 comments

A rocket carrying human beings going to space to live for a few days in zero gravity, viewed from an airplane carrying hundreds of humans 30,000 feet in the air, filmed on a camera that fits into your pocket.

Do we need any more proof that human beings are incredible?

Or that fossil fuels are incredible...

Discovery doesn't use fossil fules. The main engines are powered by oxygen and hydrogen and the solid rocket boosters are made up of ammonium perchlorate, aluminum and iron oxide.

Hydrogen is a storage medium. Fossil fuels are used as the energy source to make the rocket propellant.

I can also guarantee you that fossil fuels were used in the production and distribution of the rocket boosters and that the airplane the video was taken from wouldn't be flying if it didn't have any jet fuel in it's tank.

Humans are smart creatures, but we shouldn't kid ourselves into thinking we would be where we are at now if it weren't for a cheap, albeit limited, supply of highly concentrated energy.

By that logic, fossil fuel is a storage medium too. Solar energy was used as the energy source to make fossil fuel.

True, with the difference being humans (and our predecessors) had to wait hundreds of thousands of years for the fossil fuels to form under the immense pressure (and additional energy input) of the earth.

And you believe that the value of this observation is what, exactly?

That we are wasting energy which has been stored and untapped for hundreds of thousands of years? Do we really expect that our ancestors will be better able to exploit this value than we are... without our given expliotation? Will this be true forever? Should we just let that stored energy remain forever?

Ceteris parabis, we will extract exactly as much value from our ancestors as makes sense. And our ancestors will do exactly the same. I do not begrudge them that any mire than I begrudge us this current state of affairs.

Fossil fuels are only incredible because humans figured out how to use them. They have no inherent value apart from our minds.

And yet despite all this amazing intellectual capability we seem somehow unable to balance a government budget, year after year after year. Hmmmmmm....

Everything is amazing and nobody's happy.

haha, nice! yes the great Louis C.K. routine. "You're sitting in chair. But it's thousands of feet in the air and hurtling along at hundreds of miles an hour but you're perfectly safe. Yet we complain about the taste of the coffee not being just right." to summarize.

well played :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itn8TwFCO4M

There's a certain kind of person that's drawn to politics and usually they are not the enterprising productive type.

Perhaps we should just leave it at "there are humans that can do incredible things, but most humans just sit around and argue about who should be allowed to do incredible things, who should be allowed to allow these things, and who should get credit for those things if they ever happen to get done."

In that context, the technical wizardry isn't the miracle, the miracle is that the stupid monkeys could cooperate long enough to actually get it done.

How is it relevant in any way that this was filmed with an iPhone?

How do you know someone has an iPhone? They'll tell you.

What a nice populist sentiment. Also: Completely and utterly wrong.

The guy who took the video doesn’t mention his iPhone anywhere, not in the title, not in the video description.

It's very relevant to getting enough attention to come on the front page and grab more votes.

As does pointing out that you could do this without an iPhone. Clearly these are the sort of thoughts which can only be described using a qwerty keyboard, right?

It's not but it's relevant in the perspective that fourspace says further up.

The specific device is irrelevant and so is your question.

The headline “Smartphone Films Final Discovery Launch From 30,000 Feet Up” would be just as good but complaining about the additional (albeit irrelevant) information in the real headline seems just strange.

The information in the headline that this was taken by a smartphone is certainly valuable – you immediately know that this is not about professional video footage for example from a NASA plane but amateur footage taken from a commercial airliner which is a lot cooler.

Does it really annoy you and all the people who upvoted you so much that the writer of the headline (not even the guy who took and published the video) went that small extra step and mentioned the specific model of the device used to capture the video and not just the general category? Why exactly?

You don't seem to understand people that suffer from gadget inadequacy. They look at their own and other people's choices in purchasing consumer electronics as a reflection of self worth.

What indicates it was an iPhone anyway? The video doesn't say that. Is there a clue in the format?

iPhone is web scale. That and MongoDB.

I would like to point out that if it had been taken with a HTC Desire HD it would have been even better!

I would like to point out that if it had been taken with a Canon 5Dmk2 it would have been even better!

And so on, and so on, and on...

It's pretty cool that this guy has an autonomous iPhone that films stuff for him.

Wow, lucky guy! Did the plane follow it for a bit? I'm thinking about the remark on the speaker system at 1:28.

I think it travelled about 59 miles in 2 minutes so they would have had a job!

Hm, yeah I was referring to horizontally getting closer to the action of the launch.

I think they have a 40 mile no fly zone around the launch site.

Good picture of a launch being guarded by an F-15... http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123205663

That definitely makes sense, but on the other hand it doesn't answer the question if they took a detour. Nice picture by the way, thanks.

There is something about those pictures that is making me want to make an airfix model - just for the benefit of my son of course...

Depends where the flight left from - a friend flight was kept on the ground for an extra few min to catch the launch. Or at least that was his assumption.

"Drinks are on the house!"

blogspam

indeed, link to the original video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE_USPTmYXM

I am ashamed to admit that I have too much time on my hands today. The same video, with an alternate soundtrack: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXZrkqKo8NQ

Nice. Somehow I expected "The Final Countdown" to be playing.

What does this mean?

Ya I was watching the launch on tv, then stepped outside and you could see it from the other side of Florida, I've seen a launch up in close once, to bad I was really really sick to enjoy it.

Yeah, I've seen two launches from Tampa (including the last night launch), and you can see things pretty well. This video blows it away though, I would have loved to be on that plane.

I was 30 miles south of the launch. It kinda sucked, I saw the first few seconds (which was amazing), then it disappeared into clouds.

I don't understand what led the author to believe that this was filmed using an iPhone 4; nor why that has anything to do with the rest of the video.

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