Videos Eleven Kept Going

Eleven Kept Going

December 21, 2015. Cape Canaveral, night. A SpaceX Falcon 9 carried eleven ORBCOMM satellites to orbit, and they kept going. Its first stage turned around in the dark, came back, and landed standing up at Landing Zone 1: the first orbital-class rocket booster ever to come home. A song for whoever sat in a room and did the math. 🚀

Watch on YouTube · 5:13 · video by Claude Opus 5.5 · Subscribe to @adita_zzz

The code behind it

Every frame of this video is drawn by a Python program. This is the heart of it, from scene.py, line 525.

songs/eleven-kept-going/scene.py

def render_frame(t, W=1920, H=1080, fi=0):
    k = EKG_SCALE * (RENDER_SCALE_9x16 if vert(W, H) else 1.0)
    if k < 0.999:
        w2, h2 = int(round(W * k / 2) * 2), int(round(H * k / 2) * 2)
        img = cv2.resize(hdr_at(t, w2, h2), (W, H), interpolation=cv2.INTER_CUBIC); img = np.maximum(img, 0)
    else:
        img = hdr_at(t, W, H)
    out = K.develop(img, fi).astype(F32)
    slate(out, t, W, H); subtitles(out, t, W, H); captions(out, t, W, H); title(out, t, W, H)
    if not C.STATE["clean"]:
        C.subscribe_pill(out, t, W, H, 27.0, 5.0)
        C.end_screen(out, t, W, H, T_END, DUR - T_END, "One came home.", sub_line="Subscribe for a new song every week",
                     title="Eleven Kept Going", accent=ORANGE)
    out *= (1 - sstep(DUR - 1.0, DUR - 0.05, t))
    return (np.clip(out, 0, 1) * 255 + 0.5).astype(np.uint8)

Read all 4,084 lines on GitHub. If you use it, credit aditazzz and link the video.

What you see

Until the Turn the camera only ever looks up: the floodlit rocket on the pad, nine engines lighting, the climb, the first stage falling away. On "But this one" the screen goes black, and from "turned around" on it only looks down: the booster flipping over the night Earth, grid fins, the long way down to one light on the coast, the entry burn (the only orange in the whole video), four legs unfolding, touchdown at Landing Zone 1. Then the desk where somebody did the math, and the plan on the whiteboard turning into the two real arcs of light.

Files

File	Lines	What it draws
`after.py`	90	After touchdown, the camera still looking down: the booster standing in its smoke, Landing Zone 1 from straight above with the ghosts of what didn't happen (no parachute, no ocean), one foot on the concrete, and the booster alone on its lit circle by the moonlit sea.
`ascent.py`	186	High above the Cape, looking up at the climbing rocket: the plume blooming in thin air, main engine cutoff, the first stage falling away and the second lighting; then the ladder of spent stages ("you wanted the sky, you left the ladder behind") and the light splitting into eleven.
`coast.py`	421	The view across the water toward the Cape: the cold open (a long lens on the floodlit rocket), the launch seen from the shore, the long-exposure "two arcs", the booster standing on Landing Zone 1, and dawn.
`descent.py`	283	After the Turn the camera only looks down: the booster flipping in the dark, the boostback burn, grid fins and cold gas, the entry burn (the first orange), the landing burn on one engine and four legs unfolding into the dark.
`ekg.py`	680	Eleven Kept Going: the rendering kit.
`fix_timing.py`	59	Eleven Kept Going: word-time fixes after studio.sync.
`ground.py`	370	The night Cape seen from above, from orbit down to a few hundred metres: a curved Earth, the real coastline with its city and road lights, a moonlit sea with its glitter path, a cloud deck lit from below by the towns, and the floodlit circle of Landing Zone 1.
`lz.py`	249	Landing Zone 1 up close: the floodlit concrete circle, the last few hundred metres on one engine, touchdown in a burst of smoke, the booster standing upright in it, and its feet on the concrete.
`make_florida.py`	51	Builds the Florida-wide night map around the Cape: a land mask from full-resolution coastlines (GSHHS) and points of light spread from NASA's Black Marble city-lights imagery.
`make_map.py`	81	Builds the Cape Canaveral night map (a land mask and its coordinates) from full-resolution GSHHS coastlines.
`orbit.py`	164	Orbit at night: the real night Earth (city lights, moonlit clouds and sea, the airglow on the limb), the second stage, and eleven small machines drifting apart. Also the high, dark views used around the Turn.
`pad.py`	293	At the pad, the camera always looking up (the rule until the Turn): the floodlit vehicle, the folded legs and grid fins, the nine engines, the eleven satellites through an x-ray fairing, ignition and liftoff from up close. Lit like a night photograph, by physical lamps.
`room.py`	295	The room where somebody did the math: the desk from straight above (pages of numbers, a plotted trajectory, a pencil, a calculator, a cold coffee), lit by a lamp at night and the window at dawn, and the whiteboard where the flight is drawn in marker as she sings it.
`rt.py`	323	Per-pixel ray tracing of the rocket's round parts (tanks, interstage, fairing, engine bells): smooth normals, soft point lights, semi-gloss highlights and soot, frost and panel detail, composited in depth order with the flat-shaded legs and grid fins.
`scene.py`	539	Eleven Kept Going — the first orbital-class booster to come home (21 December 2015, Cape Canaveral, Landing Zone 1).

By the numbers

5:10 long, 18,756 frames rendered (16:9 and 9:16, 30 fps)
70 lyric lines and 249 words synced to the vocals, 136 BPM
5 Shorts and Reels cut from it

Lyrics

Words and music by aditazzz.

Intro

December twenty-first
Twenty-fifteen
Cape Canaveral
Night

Verse

Eleven small machines
Waiting in the dark
Built to leave the ground
Never to come back
Nine engines came alive
The whole night turned white
For a few seconds
Darkness lost the sky

Verse

Then the first stage falls away
While the second carries on
That's the way it's always been
Once it's spent, it's gone
Somewhere down below
Lost in what it costs
To send something higher
Than we've ever gone
That was the bargain
You wanted the sky
You left the ladder behind

Refrain

Eleven kept going

Turn

But this one turned around

Verse

Grid fins catch the air
Cold gas turns it slow
A long way down
A long way left to go
And it is not drifting
It knows where it is going
It is aiming

Build

Entry burn
The whole sky turns orange
Falling faster
Than something that size
Should ever fall
Then
Landing burn
One engine
Four legs unfolding
Into the dark

Peak

Eleven kept going
One came home

Post-chorus

It stood there in the smoke
Upright
A moment ago
It was falling through the sky
Now it was standing still
Landing Zone One
No parachute
No ocean
Just concrete
Under its feet
Like it had somewhere
To be tomorrow

Outro

Somebody built that
Somebody sat in a room
Looked at the numbers
Did the math
And said
It will turn here
Burn here
Fall this far
Light again
And come back
And it came back

Final chorus

One came home
One came home
One came home