You see video of rockets with munitions in them like surface -to-air and plane mounted rockets and they seem to move so quick. Why do these massive rockets seem to move slow? Is it payload? Do they speed up as they reach the stratosphere?
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It has a lot to do with the distance. Those cameras are often several miles away and using zoom lenses.
I can’t adequately explain how it works, someone else will be able to but that is the basic gist of it. It’s frustrating really, I have the reason it works in my head but I can’t get it to my fingers and explain it in words lol
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It’s because they’re shot from very far away. Same as when you see a plane in the sky that looks like it’s going slow as molasses, even though in reality it’s traveling hundreds of miles per hour.
They’re slow coming off the launch pad because they’re full of fuel, often starting with a thrust to weight ratio only slightly higher than one. The acceleration increases as they get lighter.
However, they’re still moving much faster than it seems, it just looks slow because the scale of the rocket is huge.
In some cases, it is because the footage from space agencies is slowed down. They have high speed cameras that are used to get data about everything that happens during the launch. These look slo mo when played back. But also, rockets are *huge*. Even if you have a lot of thrust, it takes a little while to accelerate all that mass to a high speed. Also, things that are very large, even when moving very fast, appear to be moving relatively slowly
Something that’s really far away but moving quickly is easy to mistake for something that’s closer and moving slowly.
It’s similar to how a plane in the sky doesn’t look like it’s moving very fast because there’s nothing nearby that you can compare it with to get a sense for how far away it is.
Rockets are not a thing that most of us have seen in person, so we don’t have a good sense for how big they are. You’re probably thinking they’re smaller than they really are, which makes it look like they’re moving more slowly than they really are.
As mentioned, the zooming in from a distance has a bit to do with how it’s perceived. The viewing angle changes little as the object is tracked into the sky.
There also isn’t much in the way of reference points. That cloud see in the background is miles away.
Compare this to a zoomed shot of a rally race. That car is buzzing past objects like trees and ballsy photographers at seemingly unreal speeds. But they are within arms reach almost.
Rockets are launched is into a vast pocket of nothing to compare it’s speed to.
Most of the speed issue is related to the scale of the object. A car travelling at 200 MPH is travelling at around 15 car lengths per second. A rocket travelling 200 miles per hour right after lift off is travelling less than one “rocket length” per second. Both are travelling the same speed, but the scale of them make their speed look very different.
I wonder if it has anything to do with the same reason cars look super slow on camera? Probably right?
Rockets are massive. Absolutely massive. They also weigh an ungodly amount. Now add the perspective of being really far away. Everything looks slow. Massive objects moving fast give you this strange illusion that they are moving slower than they are. Rockets or missiles fired from aircraft look slower because that aircraft is already moving close to the speed of sound. I’m reality these things are moving 1000+ mph. To reach orbit Apollo is moving almost 20,000mph. It’s just the sheer size that gives off the slow perspective.
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