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Comment by mixmax | Hacker News Reader

I have a favour to ask of HN.

I'm responsible for webcasting Copenhagen Suborbitals launches, and we're having a lot of great discussions about what works and what doesn't in a live webcast of a launch. We obviously want our webcasts to be as interesting as possible, and so I'd like to ask you a question:

What do you think could be done better in this Space X webcast? Is there something you're missing? Something you think would be cool? Something that's bothering you? Are the speakers good? Why?

I'm sure we can learn a lot by asking potential viewers what they think, and implement it for next summers launches.

And good luck to SpaceX!

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I'd like it to be richer in information, even if I won't understand all of it. I'd like to see diagrams of the engine, description of how it works, discussion of pros/cons of various technologies, how this one is different, etc, etc.

For example, they mentioned they don't want the rocket to fly through clouds because of water vapor. Why is that? How does it interfere with the rocket? What can it cause? How confidently can we measure water vapor in atmosphere?

Simply, much more technical information and more educational.

Something I would like to suggest, now that we're at T+00:06:40 it would be cool to see more than just the second stage engine doing its thing. The live feed from the craft is always interesting, but now that the ground cameras aren't able to provide "cool" tracking shots of the vehicle, I would like to see telemetry data. Current speed, distance from launch, and maybe a map with the position superimposed would be interesting to me. Basically something to give me a broader overview of what was/is happening. Thanks for the awesome live feed!

And Dragon is in orbit! Congratulations to the SpaceX team!

one vote from me! I kept listening and hearing "blah blah km", but it doesn't mean anything to me so I had to look up what else is at 200kms in altitude.

Maybe an updating checklist you tick off, as the launch progresses. Normally, the steps to amateurs just seem to be (1) Launch. (2) Don't crash.

I'm sure there are some steps before, between, and after those two. :)

It would also make it more exciting to watch, since it makes the sense of progression and success more tangible.

That's an excellent idea!

Thats a fantastic idea.

So far so good, the pre-launch show is interesting, full of interesting content both live (Q&A) and pre-recorded videos.

The speakers reading from a prompter is a bit too obvious at times but this is a minor annoyance. It's awesome that they are actual engineers/managers involved with SpaceX's day-to-day operations.

(It might make sense to setup an off-site poll for this, I'm not sure Hacker News' commenting system will scale well for this kind of feedback.)

Yep. Real engineers FTW!

You need to find engineers who understand the stuff AND can also speak clearly. Or can train to improve in either.

I realize many engineers are not good at speaking to general audiences since they might use jargon or are really slow, stutter etc.. Probably they can improve a lot if you pay attention to it and consider it important and devote the necessary resources like time and money.

I'll take an opportunity to ask you a question.

I saw the news the other day that you guys had written a video mixer for Linux, with integrated Chyrons, transitions, and all that. That's great work, but I do have a question about the motivation behind it.

As a former television technical director, I was curious what made you choose to write a custom software video mixer. The alternative, of course, would be picking up a cheap digital mixer, like a Grass Valley, and encoding its program output instead. Was the impetus financial in nature? Technical, since making a video mixer train work is a little challenging unless you have experience (reference signals, CCU if you have fancy-enough cameras, and so on)? Are you mixing audio in your software suite as well, or do you have an external mixer? (The rationale for each is the same, IMO.)

I'm just curious. Not saying the work isn't valued, just steaming ahead on writing a custom software mixer is an interesting decision. Production houses usually have old digital mixers in storage and might be willing to donate to your effort, too.

It's a very good question!

Launches are done in the Baltic Sea, 30-40 km. east of the Danish island Bornholm. In order to stream live we managed to get a wi-fi connection going from Bornholm to the mission control ship 40 kilometers away, but we couldn't reliably get enough bandwidth to stream all our camera positions to Bornholm. Furthermore internet connection on Bornholm is not very good. The result being that we needed to do the videomixing at sea. Only problem was that the broadcast studio, and thus the people that need to do the vdeomixing, were placed in Copenhagen. The result being this videomixer where we can send two streams from the launch site at sea: the livefeed and a mosaiq of available camera positions. The studio in Copenhagen can then remotely mix the livefeed based on the mosaiq using a webbased interface, or a commandline.

Ah, that makes sense, so you're sending a program and sorta-preview from this custom tool to a fuller production studio and it's remote-driven. That makes more sense.

Right on, thanks for answering.

With the studio consisting of our speaker, Peter who wrote the snowmix mixer, me and a few laptops in a backroom in the local planetarium. So a studio is probably overstating it. But hey, that's what you can get with a budget of 0.

:-)

Astroturfing.

I would love to see a channel or webapp that had the real-time telemetry feeds. As techy as possible.

That's actually one of the things we're working on. We're hoping to have a fighterjet-like heads up display showing altitude, roll, pitch, etc. that will be overlayed on the stream.

You may consider showing the rocket in relation to the Earth. I tuned in at T+7 and just saw an engine burning, now at T+10 the engine cut off and the thing is in orbit. I have no idea where the rocket is at this point. Would a live Google Earth feed be a possibility?

Very cool stuff.

I think even a 2d map with a dot for the object would be serviceable and neat in cases like this. Maybe draw the flight path in a swath that changes color over altitude.

In example, think how meteorologists on TV use color on a map to show the how much rain has fallen.

dark green -> green -> dark yellow -> yellow -> orange -> red -> blinking purple

Just use a gradient with colors that won't interfere with whatever map you're using. Maybe just "yellow -> orange -> red" as it progresses to its target. Then once it hits it, switch to white, and continue to chart the movement as long as you broadcast.

The launch coverage was too clinical. 1,800 employees behind the company and they must be absolutely ecstatic right now. There were very brief audio snippets where you could hear cheering, but it would have been great to have gotten to feel what it's like to be there inside Launch Control. NASA Curiosity did a much better job of this, with applause, cheering, hugs, and high fives.

Congratulations to the whole team at SpaceX!

The likely difference is probably not enthusiasm, but the fact that the Curiosity folks were just along for the ride. Everything happening had already happened minutes ago.

I _LOVED_ the fact that they had an engineer co-hosting the webcast. He wasn't the typical pretty-boy spewing stuff from a teleprompter that he didn't understand, and his post-launch elation said it all.

Go for quality information, even if it's a bit rough around the edges from a BS marketing standpoint.

Get a REAL rocket scientist spreading the word.

Both of the hosts were engineers, actually.

Subtitles - Not all the world is sleeping, now we are currently sitting here in an office. Many of us have the webcast up on their screens, but we either don't have headphones or don't have the sound on.

A timeline of what is supposed to happen - Since we had no sound we were left wondering what was happening, and when the next event should be. It would be nice to have something like:

   T-30 - XXX
   T-5 - YYY
   T-0 - Launch
   T+2 - ZZZ

I love being able to hear their comm checks. It really makes you feel like you are actually there.

"Vehicle is supersonic."

gives me the shivers every time

The engineer host sounds like a goofball. When he tries to add his personality it sounds really artificial and forced.

He is very goofy but exactly what I would expect from a rocket engineer doing tv hosting. Quirky but awesome! Doesn't sound artificial to me at all, but I'll agree he doesn't sound very comfortable doing it yet.

The male engineer is a little nerdy, but it works for me. The female engineer is more polished, but still slightly nerdy in an appealing way.

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