Video Analysis and Python Model of the SpaceX Double Booster Landing
Even in a video, it’s a super impressive sight. Two rockets coming in fast, but landing side by side on their own platforms. That’s how the SpaceX Falcon Heavy boosters are supposed to function. Here’s a video.
Just like an artist will paint a picture of a lovely flower, I have to use some physics to appreciate this epic event. In this case, I’m going to use Tracker Video Analysis (it’s free) to look at the motions of these boosters as they land. It will be fun.
If you aren’t familiar, let me explain the basic idea of video analysis. If we take a video, we can look at the position of an object in each frame. We can get time data from the frame number (assuming the playback frame rate is the same as the real speed). If we know the size of objects in the frame of the video, we can also get x and y position. That’s a lot of stuff.
Scaling the Video And Fixing the Frame
The first step is to scale the video. In this case I can use the length of the booster itself. This…
