The Incredible Sounds of the Falcon Heavy Launch (BINAURAL AUDIO IMMERSION) - Smarter Every Day 189

Yeah, I stared at it for a while when I first zoomed in :) Somebody suggested a schlieren photo could be overlaid on the audio graphic to show where the shock waves are coming from physically - sounds like a fun project for an upcoming launch...

Emory Stagmer(VAXHeadroom)

By the way: I love how similar the lines for the three booms are. That looks so unnatural! :D

Nice job! I guess it'll be difficult to figure out what caused the booms with just the audio data, though. You would need to match audio and video perfectly, compensating for the difference between the speed of light and the speed of sound AND figuring out when exactly each part of the rocket reaches Mach-1. No idea on how to pull that off :'(

FYI: here's the zoomed-in pic of my recording of the 1st booster's sonic booms: <a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DW7sCVBVMAAKP3W.jpg:large" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DW7sCVBVMAAKP3W.jpg:large</a> (note: proud papa - not clipped or compressed! :D ) And now I'm wondering if we might be able to figure out just what's causing each by their relative spacing?!?

Emory Stagmer(VAXHeadroom)

I found a source: <a href="http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/organizations/space-exploration-technologies/double-triple-landing-falcon-9-creates-three-sonic-booms/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/organizations/space-exploration-technologies/double-triple-landing-falcon-9-creates-three-sonic-booms/</a> - one of the comments is interesting: "John Taylor, SpaceX’s Communications Director, is only partially correct about his sonic boom explanation. The first boom is the bow shock-wave generated by the engines, landing legs, bottom of the booster. It is unique in that it is a “normal shock-wave” generated at Mach-1 and moves in the direction that the booster is going, aimed at the landing pad. As opposed to a supersonic aircraft that is generating shock-cones that are moving at some angle wrt the vehicle direction. The second shock-wave is the wake shock, which is generated by the air coming back together aft of the top of the booster. This wake-shock-wave is split into two, probably due to the grid fins, which created a bow shock that propagated forward and combined with the engine bow shock and a second weaker wake shock just after the main wake shock." - I'm still not sure I get it. Probably my understanding of sonic booms is just insufficient. I always imagine circles representing the sound waves which at Mach-1 create a nice perfect overlay which then causes the boom. But in this case the analogy fails me. Would be awesome if anyone could explain this one.

I was so pissed at those guys - the sound of the copter was quite loud where I was at the countdown clock, also trying to capture the sound :) <a href="https://youtu.be/l3abS9MM5yE" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/l3abS9MM5yE</a> Folks have compared the sound on our two videos and I'd say they are equally well done, but have a slightly different quality :)

Emory Stagmer(VAXHeadroom)

I heard Elon has said the 3rd boom is the grid fins, but I don't have a source for the quote.

Emory Stagmer(VAXHeadroom)

Will do!

Smarter Every Day

You're EXACTLY right. Here's a photo of the bird: <a href="http://www.afrc.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/1435111/reserve-citizen-airman-support-successful-spacex-falcon-heavy-milestone-launch/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.afrc.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/1435111/reserve-citizen-airman-support-successful-spacex-falcon-heavy-milestone-launch/</a>

Smarter Every Day

One thing I still don't get is what exactly causes the third sonic boom? So the first is going sub sonic. The second one is the legs connecting with the booster, which is crazy enough. But what's the third one?

Hey Destin, My wife Becki and I were there on the ground in the press area so I know exacty what you mean by the amazing sound! My Dad was in the moon space program in the 60s and I was born in Cocoa if 58 so been around a lot of launches. What I am about to say is the absolute truth. I was talking about the sound as explained below and was telling Becki how I was going to contact you to suggest that you create a video about the sound. I couldn't believe my eyes and ears when Youtube reported to me that you had made a video about the launch sound!!! We were talking about the amazing sound at 3.2 miles away and I was thinking about how launch sound seems to tumble over itself with pops and snaps that sounds kind of disorganized. My theory is the actual sound created is much more linear and smooth at the source. But the sound that you hear at distance kinda has a multi-path effect by the time it arrives at your ears or a microphone. I think the sound of thunder behaves in the same way. We have been long time supporters of your great work and I just subscribed to the Sound Traveler with Patreon support and also subscribed to Trevor's channel and provided Patreon support. It would be great if you could reach back to me via Patreon for a short discussion regarding my theory about the launch and thunder sound. You have done such great work with the high speed camera to show how things happen that we can't see with our eyes. Maybe there are somethings you could teach us about sound as well so we all could get smarter every day!

Great video - what a dream getting to do stuff like this for a living

Invisible Jazz

Would that be a HH-60G Pave Hawk hovering overhead? The 920th Rescue Wing at CC AFS provides support for NASA missions so my guess would be that they would have supported this launch as well.

David Cichowski

Yeah very clearly only 6 to me as well.

James Austin

The shuttle used solid rocket boosters. As a general rule, solid rocket fuel makes a lot of smoke. Falcon uses liquid rockets engines only, which burn all the fuel into water vapour and carbon dioxide gas with only traces of other stuff.

James Austin

That is so awesome! :D Interestingly I'm hearing the six sonic booms that actually happen, not ten. They do sound like the audio cuts out right after, though.

Why does Falcon Heavy not leave an exhaust plume behind it like the Space Shuttle did? <a href="https://i.imgur.com/CoQdknQ.jpg" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://i.imgur.com/CoQdknQ.jpg</a>

It doesn't take away from 1) Your awesome video on the sound, thank you for that, it's something I'd never have experienced any other way. and 2) What was frankly an amazing launch and feat of science and technology. :) Also if you watch the upload, you can totally see the moment the commentators were told the centre booster didn't make it, promptly followed by someone telling them to NOT say that out loud! They handled it well!. It was a while before they publicly confirmed the central booster didn't make it.

haha, no worries man. I'm just glad they corrected the upload so you can see what's really going on. The feed also cut during the doors opening, but that's fixed in post too. :) The wonders of editing ey!

Yep. It makes my comment "I think that the fact that these look like the same video is beautiful" very funny now. Also it triggers my OCD. I've pinned the top comment pointing out the error. That's all I can do at this point.

Smarter Every Day

Hey Destin, on the live feed, the booster video was indeed of the same one. Just 2 very slightly different angles. If you watch the one they uploaded after, they overlayed the footage from the other booster properly. Sadly they weren't quite in perfect time. very close, but not quite. The flame from the burn was the giveaway, you can't get fire to behave identically for both boosters, also they showed the same pad on both cameras on the live feed, which was the final giveaway. There's actually a few seconds on the uploaded footage where you can clearly see a bit of a bad edit on the overlayed video too.