Video Analysis: SpaceX Super Heavy Booster Landing. A Perfect Physics Problem.
Rockets are cool. I mean, who would think that humans could play with weird spacecraft in Kerbal Space Program and then actually make it happen in real life? It’s crazy, I tell you. Crazy.
So, if you haven’t seen it — the SpaceX Super Heavy booster lands in its launch pad. This means that it doesn’t need to carry landing legs and it doesn’t need to be moved for a quick relaunch. Check it out.
Video Analysis
This is a great video to collect data using video analysis. The basic idea is to mark the location of an object in each frame of the video. This will give us the x-y position of that object as a function of time. Yes, you need to know the size of something in the frame — but it’s RIGHT THERE. The SpaceX booster (71 meters long).
There are a couple of options to collect this data, but I’m a huge fan of Tracker Video Analysis. With that, let me just go ahead and mark the bottom of the booster. Here’s a plot of the vertical position as a function of time as it lands.
