vertical landing

Curious Droid surveys vertical take-off and landing rockets that predate SpaceX and Blue Origin, including the McDonnell Douglas DC-X of the 1990s. It shows that propulsive landing has about 60 years of history.

Utah State plant scientist Bruce Bugbee presents his analysis of the energy and environmental costs of vertical and indoor farming. He argues artificial lighting cannot compete with sunlight in fields or greenhouses.

NASA's animated explanation of the Curiosity rover's Mars landing, which relied on a complex automated sequence taking about seven minutes. It features NASA engineers discussing the risks before the 2012 landing.

Sped-up onboard camera footage of the Falcon 9 first stage landing on a drone ship during the THAICOM 8 mission on May 27, 2016. It shows the descent from grid fin deployment to touchdown.

A clip from Joe Rogan Experience #928 in which Rogan, with Arian Foster, explains why he abandoned his belief in Moon landing conspiracy theories. He describes how doctored training photos fueled doubt before he learned more of the physics.

SpaceX's official footage of the CRS-6 Falcon 9 first stage landing attempt, in high resolution and slow motion. It shows the descent and touchdown on the drone ship.

A short Boeing-supplied clip where the 737 MAX program's chief project engineer explains how the lengthened landing gear of the MAX 10 folds up. It shows the gear model in motion.

A hobbyist compares vertical bifacial solar panels against south-facing angled panels using winter production results. It tests whether the usual mounting approach is actually best.

A four-pane view of Armadillo Aerospace's Mod vehicle on a June 2010 boosted hop. The flight includes engine shutdown, drogue chute deployment, an engine restart and a safe landing.

Cockpit footage of an approach to the Megeve altiport in France that ends in a gear-up landing, with the warning horn audible throughout. Everyone aboard survived and the crew had thousands of flight hours.

SpaceX footage of the Grasshopper reusable rocket prototype flying 325 m before landing on its pad. It was the first test to use the full navigation sensor suite and closed-loop control for a precision landing.

Footage of DC-X Flight 8 from July 1995 at White Sands, in which the Delta Clipper Experimental reusable rocket turned over into a re-entry profile and re-oriented itself for landing.

NASA JPL engineers explain the final minutes of the Curiosity rover's entry, descent and landing on Mars, which combined aerobraking, a parachute and a skycrane. It lays out the tight sequence of events that all had to work automatically.

A filmmaker explains why the Apollo moon landing footage could not have been faked in a studio, based on the video and film technology of the late 1960s. He walks through the limits of cameras, frame rates and effects of the era.

SpaceX footage of the Grasshopper vehicle's 744 m test hop, filmed from a hexacopter that gets closer than earlier flights. Grasshopper was a vertical takeoff and landing rig built to test returning rockets to the pad.

Stuntman Gary Connery jumps from a helicopter at 2,400 feet in a wingsuit and lands without a parachute on a runway of stacked cardboard boxes, the first such landing.

SpaceX's own compilation of failed orbital booster landing attempts, set to sound, showing the crashes before landings succeeded.

Joe Barnard of BPS.space shows his model rocket Scout F landing vertically like a SpaceX booster after seven years of attempts. The video documents the successful landing and the build-up to it.

A man with no flight instruction and only desktop flight simulator experience attempts to take off and land a Cessna 172, with a commercial airline instructor aboard who gives no help. The flight came out of a prop bet.

SpaceX's livestream of the Falcon Heavy test flight, including the launch, side booster landings and Tesla Roadster payload. It was the first launch of the most powerful operational rocket at the time.

Bret Copeland, in an astronaut costume, gives an energetic talk on how the Space Shuttle landed from orbit, including reentry and the unpowered glide. It includes real-time landing footage with HUD and audio.

SpaceX's recap of the Falcon Heavy debut launch, with side booster landings and a Tesla Roadster with Starman sent into orbit.

Defense analyst H I Sutton argues that a new type of Chinese landing barge can only be explained by planning for an amphibious assault, in particular on Taiwan.

Short archival footage of a USMC KC-130F Hercules making unarrested landings and takeoffs on the USS Forrestal in 1963. It is the largest and heaviest aircraft to have landed on a carrier, and the tests were judged successful but too risky for routine use.

Dr. Bruce Bugbee walks through the calculations for crop yield potential when light is the limiting factor, from photosynthetic quantum yield through respiration efficiency and harvest index, using the Energy Cascade Model.

Tesla's 2020 Battery Day event, with a company update and a keynote on new cell design, manufacturing, vertical integration and cheaper lithium and materials. It ends with the Plaid Model S and a Q&A.

A documentary on how Cornwall became a hub for the world's communications, from the first transatlantic radio signal to modern undersea fibre cables. It describes how cable landing stations and the systems are put together.

Short Airbus footage of its ATTOL project, in which a test aircraft performed a fully automatic, vision-based take-off at Toulouse-Blagnac. The crew ran eight take-offs over several hours.

Boeing rehearses its 2015 Paris Air Show flying display of the Vietnam Airlines 787-9 Dreamliner, including a very steep takeoff and tight turns.

A short excerpt from the 2007 iPhone launch where Steve Jobs quotes Alan Kay: people serious about software should make their own hardware. It explains part of why Apple built the phone itself.

SpaceX's livestream of the Starship SN8 high-altitude test on December 9, 2020. It ascended, did the landing flip with flap control and reached the landing point, but touched down hard because of low header tank pressure.

A SpaceX concept animation of a Falcon 9 and Dragon launch with powered vertical return of both stages and the capsule. It was uploaded to YouTube in 2011.

Autoline's John McElroy and Caresoft president Terry Woychowski look at the BYD Seagull, an electric hatchback that sells in China for about $11,500. Woychowski points out the cost-saving design and manufacturing choices, and McElroy takes it for a short test drive.

A SpaceX concept animation showing the planned fully reusable Falcon 9, with both first and second stages performing vertical landings.

Amateur footage of a Thomsonfly 757 ingesting a bird on takeoff from Manchester, with a flaming engine and a safe return, with 233 people aboard.

SpaceX footage of the Grasshopper vertical takeoff and landing test vehicle making its first roughly 6-foot hop in McGregor, Texas, on September 21, 2012. It was an early step toward a reusable Falcon 9 first stage.

Robert Wills of TNMoC explains the Apollo Guidance Computer hardware and software, then walks through the Apollo 11 landing procedure step by step, including the 1202 alarms.

A one-minute clip of Bryan Cranston at an Academy new-member reception, advising actors to approach auditions without desperation and focus on solving the problem rather than landing the job.

Kirsten Dirksen visits retired mailman Russ Finch in Alliance, Nebraska, who grows oranges, figs and pomegranates in a backyard greenhouse without paying for heat. The greenhouse uses the stable temperature of the earth, with underground earth tubes, to heat and cool itself.

Smarter Every Day shares a binaural audio recording of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch made by Trevor Mahlmann, with explanations of the sounds including the sonic booms of the landing boosters. It is meant to be heard with headphones.