scottmanley

Coming Soon..... Stowaway

In 2015 Joe Penna AKA MysteryGuitarMan contacted me about a movie he was writing about a crew headed to Mars, asking if I could offer some technical advice about space stuff. I jumped at the chance...

Improvising And Ad-Libbing OSIRIS REx

I rarely write scripts, usually I'm working from notes and bullet points, and sometimes that means a lot of cutting of moments where I start saying things and then realise I shouldn't be saying it,...

Behind the Scenes - Making Fuel Injector Animations

In my recent video on fuel injectors I made all the animations using a particle effect filter that's intended to look like a blood spray, here's a quick rundown of how I did this and for those who ...

Black Hole Raytracing

I've sorta become addicted to building out a proper black hole raytracer to do an updated version of my 360 video showing what it looks like to fall into a black hole.  I started with code fro...

Best Stuff Of The Decade Video - Games & Movies

I thought this might make a decent video but decided I didn't have the time to actually make it into a full production, so I'm sharing it here for those who are interested.

Sometimes things don't work out as planned

I'm trying to depict the location of every satellite relative to the space station, but I was stuck with the problem of wanting the Earth to look decent, so I used the only scriptable rendering env...

Taming Liquid Hydrogen

Another free NASA historical book I've been reading through, I wish I'd read it before making yesterdays video because there's a fun anecdote in there involving hitting a balloon tank with a sledge...

Space Shuttle Main Engines Upgrades

One of the main references on my RS-25 reflight video is this NTRS presentation on the multiple generations of the Space Shuttle Main Engine design. The engines were upgraded over time and swapped ...

Look at the size of that thing

Taking photos from  https://twitter.com/BocaChicaGal which we stitched together by  2019-11-09 17:15:31 +0000 UTC View Post

If You Could See All The Satellites WIP

Using the satellite data code from the weekend I started working on the idea of showing what things would look like if you could see all the satellites in the sky overhead, this is the first stage ...

Science Hack Day - Watch The Skies

This weekend I participated in the 10th San Francisco Science Hack Day http://sf.sciencehackday.org/. An event where people get...

Video from ESA/ESTEC Before Editing

I've not had time to edit the footage I'm recording on my trip to ESTEC, but I figured these are a couple of bits which don't need any editing to be interesting. The center has a public museum whic...

Space Debris & Solar Activity

I found this image in a NASA publication about orbital debris and wanted to share it. It shows 2 sets of data on the same chart. One line shows the level of solar activity, as it changes over the 1...

The Last Ever Single Stick Delta Rocket

Tomorrow morning the last of the single stick Delta IV's will launch, leaving the Delta IV Heavy as the only Delta design still flying. Last year we saw the final Delta II as well. The Delta IV has...

Kerbal Space Program 2 Is Coming

I owe a huge part of my youtube success to the popularity of this game, when it appeared I had a step up from other gamers because of my background in astronomy. When flying the rockets I made I'd ...

New Tune By Test Shot Starfish - AKA 'SpaceX FM'

I'm a sucker for their music as background for working on all sorts of things, especially when they borrow liberally from space themes for their SpaceX soundtrack work.

If you've ever wondere...

A Rocket Casts A Shadow On Its Own Exhaust Trail

This morning's AEHF-5 launch by the ULA was rather spectacular, there were some minor delays and the rocket lifted off about 40 minutes before sunrise. This lead to a highly visible trail which was...

Learning New Things About The F-15 Launched ASAT Missile

I've been doing some research for a story about the only case of a pilot 'shooting down' a satellite and in the process found that I'd misunderstood the launch trajectory for years. The missile had...

Ariane & SpaceX Launches Today

For those who like watching live, Ariane is about to launch and is livestreaming:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...

Amazing Fairing

SpaceX just released this stunning video from the recovered fairing during its controlled reentry. Looking back into the ionized air from the reentry, probably the fastest reentry of a fairing to d...

A Big Day On Space TV

Earlier in the day NASA performed a spectacular live test of the Launch Escape System for the Orion Capsule intended to fly on SLS - I missed it live due to being on a train, but it looked like a s...

Deep space update from deep inside Europe

With asteroid day events taking all my time I haven’t had any video making opportunities - so here’s a quick update while on the road.

Answering Questions

I thought some of you might be interested in my answers to these 4 questions, I recorded these for a currently unnamed TV production but without that context I can share them now:

My Earliest Space Video From Over 20 Years Ago

I created this video using POVRay in the 1990's showing a spacecraft being sent to divert a comet using a nuclear blast. I didn't use a modeller, I hand coded all the scene files, all the animation...

Omegaaaaad - OmegA Rocket First Stage Fails During Test

Northrop Grumman just livestreamed a full duration burn test for the first stage of their OmegA rocket, and seconds before the end of the test the nozzle disintegrated.

This SRB is very simil...

Asteroid (33434) Scottmanley = 1999 FU = 1989 GA6

It's official, I now have a minor planet named after me - asteroid 33434 was renamed 'Scottmanley'.

It's a small main belt asteroid, 2.74 AU out with an eccentricity of 0.064 and period of 5....

Mariner I Research - Some 'Light' Reading

The 'Why Rockets Fail' series has been something I wanted to do for years, but I always wanted to start with Mariner I - it was supposed to be the first space probe sent to another planet, but inst...

Blue Origin - Blue Moon ‘Hot take'

I’ll have a full video up for everyone tomorrow, but I had 5 minutes so I recorded this for those who are interested.

https:...

Kerbal Space Program Doesn't Teach....

I like doing these deep dives on rocket science related subjects, they take a lot of work to put together and cross reference all the sources. I have a few options for the next one, most with lots ...

Hullo!

So, yes it's official, after many requests to start a patreon I have this! 

There'll a bunch of extra updates for supporters, and I hope that if you take the plunge and support me that y...