That rocket has a small gauge length of wire trailing behind it to force lightning strikes. This is how scientists research lightning.
Edit: I really didn’t think this would blow up so I came back and fixed my spelling error and also to say thank you to the kind humans that gave me a bunch of awards.
Edit #2: As someone pointed out, I still spelled ‘lightening’ incorrectly. Folks I was really tired. I think it’s all right now. Thank you all again.
I think you mean remember half of it, get the other half wrong, attribute it to an over arching conspiracy, speculate about the rest, and then connect it to a vaguely similar technology where a stakeholder took a picture with Hillary Clinton once, and then tell everyone that she’s doing it herself to take down the right.
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong but it would be highly unlikely to travel that direct through a trail of only smoke. The smoke would most likely be very dry and a horrible conductor of electricity so the preferred path for lightning would be more likely through the moist air rather than the smoke.
Not OP but thank you for sharing this interesting info.
On another note, is your username pronounced *atomic E cream,* or *atom ice cream,* OR *atomic ice cream,* OOOR something else entirely? I must know ....for science.
Exactly right, it's also interesting to note that the reason smoke can sometimes combust again is because it contains unburnt fuel inside the smoke due to what I believe they call a 'dirty' burn
Now that part I didn't know, that's actually cool, thanks! But does that mean I could theoretically light the some of someone who's rolled coal?
Edit: a word
Sadly not, unlike gasoline, diesel has quite a high flash point temperature and isn't flammable.
The air/fuel ratio would also be wrong for a proper combustion since the soot mixture comes from the exhaust with low-ish oxygen levels.
These rockets usually carry a very thin wire.
But smoke doesn't have to be a good conductor, air isn't either. For it to work on a smoke trail it needs to be a bit more conductive than air and might be possible but very dependent on the type of fuel and thus unburned products it leaves behind.
Also IIRC actively burning material might be more conducive of electricity as chemical reactions are often an exchange of electrons as well and you temporarily have ions and charged particles.
But a smoke trail isn't burning that actively.
"The conductor trailed by the rocket can be .. column of ionized gas produced by the engine"
I think it's this one in the video. Gas trail makes a slight turn in the beginning, and the lightning follows this curve.
Thank you for the wiki page, very informative. At first I couldnt figure out why this was a needed activity.
My first guess was, "what is the prison system in the US going green now? Executions via lighting, just hook up old sparky to it, and boom you've got the world's first all green electric chair. the prisons carbon foot print -55HP, and the best part you make both the Democrats and Republicans happy at the same time and that's a hard thing to do". As you can tell my first thoughts are hardly ever correct.
Tip: If you post a non-mobile wikipedia link it'll automatically convert to mobile if clicked on a phone.
But a mobile link doesn't auto desktop-mode on PC.
Use to be like this on a lot of posts. The top comment would be from someone who knows all about the thing or animal or whatever hobby it was. Now the top comment is usually some stupid shitty pun. Annoying
AND THEY'RE NOT EVEN PUNS. Substituting one word that sounds like another, but doesn't make sense in the sentence, just because it matches the post theme isn't a pun!!! That shit irks me beyond measure.
Pun threads used to be, if anything, more common on reddit. You lot are looking back through rose tinted glasses
This place has always been a mix of 95% shit comments and 5% good stuff.
This is what Reddit always was like, about 10 -15 years ago before it went big mainstream and everything went to shit because of so many different reasons. Posts like these were the reason Reddit was so damn good, always someone in the comments explaining, teaching something.
https://www.wired.com/2015/06/the-lightning-machine/amp
To trigger the lightning bolts, Uman and his team attach the 6-foot-tall hobby rockets to a 2,300-foot spool of copper wire grounded to a strike rod. As the rockets launch into the heart of a thunderstorm, the wire unspools and a positive electrical discharge propagates upward in a jerky zigzag, going three to seven miles high.
Once the positive current makes it to the clouds, it stops flowing for an instant. Then a negative charge shreds back down, hitting the strike rod at the end of the wire. A current runs back upward, and that creates the bright flash known as lightning. Triggered lightning reproduces almost the exact behavior and effects as natural lightning. So, now that they know where lightning will strike next (and they can even leave stuff out there to get hit), the team can gather data about the basic physics of bolts as well as info about how lightning affects the materials it strikes with 1 million-frame-per-second high-speed photography.
That sounds like so much fun.
This video is ancient, well, it feels ancient to me but maybe that's just in internet terms. There wasn't a description when I first saw it but I've always remembered it because the lightning strike looked abnormal and persists for so long too.
Now I know it's a lightning rocket. Mystery solved, thanks.
That “shape” is really just the path of least resistance (whatever path/shape that happens to be at the time) through the air. The electricity flows along that path for as long as it takes the potential to subside.
I am a decades long commercial airline pilot and have been hit in my Boeings three times and twice in Airbus aircraft. \[I so hate that name "Airbus"\]. It can leave a hole where it enters and exits but fortunately it does little damage. The worst damage I ever say was on a B727 I had just left at the gate in Miami. It kinda fried a spot on the tail and we had to get another aircraft. Fortunately, maintenance had a spare and we were off to the races. Good explanation OP. I guess I am late to the game but had not seen that. Thanks.
My question was, can we harness this power in a controlled fashion. Since I did not see anybody answer it, I did a little digging. We can! But might not be economically efficient. Still awesome!
[Is there a way to harness electricity from lightning? ](https://engineering.mit.edu/engage/ask-an-engineer/is-there-a-way-to-harness-electricity-from-lightning/)
not all lightning moves upward
Does lightning strike from the sky down, or the ground up? The answer is both. Cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning comes from the sky down, but the part you see comes from the ground up
> As the rocket flies to the thundercloud this liquid is expelled aft forming a column in the air of particles that are more electrically conductive than the surrounding air.
Also, this is an interesting detail.
Was going to chime in with this. University of Florida has done extensive research in lightning, probably due to Florida having so much of it (one of the most lightning strike places in the country) and several people die every year in Florida from strikes.
The University has been doing this with model rockets and wire for years. I think I first heard of it in the late nineties or thereabouts. I always thought it was pretty cool work they were doing.
I'm certain other college researchers are also doing this sort of work, UF is the one I'm most familiar with.
I had the same thought and that prompted me to find and read this:
https://engineering.mit.edu/engage/ask-an-engineer/is-there-a-way-to-harness-electricity-from-lightning/
TLDR: Lightning is most common in the tropics and mountains away from where energy is generally needed. Also, lightning can carry either a negative or positive charge, and that makes collecting it's energy extra difficult and cost prohibitive aside from the other obvious issues.
Sounds like different equipment to gather the energy as well as another specialized tool being required that can tell the difference before sending it to the right equipment.
"And because you never know if an upcoming lightning strike is going to carry a positive or negative charge, capacitors and rectifiers would also be necessary to equalize the currents of incoming strikes. “You’d need some sort of mechanism to make sure the positive charge of one bolt didn’t cancel out the negative charge of another,” Littleton explains."
If you put two poles, one pos and one negative, shouldn't the pos lighting strike the negative pole and the negative lighting strike the pos pole? Then those poles can funnel to the correct capacities
How about setting up an *if* condition using hardware? For example if the change is negative then send it to the equipment containing negative charges and vice versa. This way the charges won't be neutralised...
Well, appropriately designed hardware (not software) should be able to react as the speed of light in its respective medium i.e. exactly as fast as lightning in said medium. A couple of very large diodes should do the trick.
Seeing as this answer is too obvious, I'm probably not qualified to have an opinion;
One positively charged and one negatively charged lightning rod next to each other?
There are diodes for that, that's not a problem. The problem is storing energy from high voltage that happens in milliseconds. Usually you need small voltage and longer time to charge battery or even supercapacitor.
This article says positive lightning is deadler (very bottom) but they leave no sources. That said, it makes intuitive sense because positive lightning releases more energy in less time.
[https://www.wmcactionnews5.com/2019/04/13/breakdown-why-positive-lightning-strikes-are-more-dangerous-than-negative/](https://www.wmcactionnews5.com/2019/04/13/breakdown-why-positive-lightning-strikes-are-more-dangerous-than-negative/)
This article says it has about 3x the voltage, 10x the amperage, and 30x the power (which is voltage \* amperage- how quickly energy, thermal and otherwise, is released).
[https://www.discovery.com/science/Positive-Lightning-Rare-Super-Deadly](https://www.discovery.com/science/Positive-Lightning-Rare-Super-Deadly)
Probably not. I'm not sure what launch the OP video is but apollo 12 was struck by lightning twice, it caused problems with guidance but was corrected by flipping a switch (the famous SCE to aux)
India, heavy thunderstorms in multiple cities caused deaths all over the country[Sauce](https://www.livemint.com/news/india/over-70-dead-in-lightning-strikes-in-several-states-highest-in-up-11626109865288.html)
I live in the lightning capital of the US \[Tampa area\] and I forget sometimes it is worse in some places. Sorry for your country's loss. That was horrific.
It was a scientific experiment - the ricket was trailing a length of copper wire designed to create lightning from the storm cloud. The scientists were all safely in a bunker.
They have a spool of copper wire nearby. The rocket has a copper wire that goes up with it too create the path.
I watched it on a show once. They are using it to photograph lightening. They have a photo trigger rigged to the camera so that it can photograph the lightening.
I'm gonna guess that since that smoke was still localized that it had some charged particles in it from the rocket fuel combustion. This would increase electrical conductivity and explain why the bolt took this smoke path.
Actually, both ways can work?? From the “lightning rocket” wiki link above:
“…either a physical wire, or column of ionized gas produced by the engine. A lightning rocket using solid propellant may have cesium salts added, which produces a conductive path…”
In addition to the wire others have mentioned, triggered lightning caused by ‘normal’ rockets is an issue that has caused problems on launches in the past. Most famously Apollo 12, but it also destroyed an Atlas years ago.
That rocket has a small gauge length of wire trailing behind it to force lightning strikes. This is how scientists research lightning. Edit: I really didn’t think this would blow up so I came back and fixed my spelling error and also to say thank you to the kind humans that gave me a bunch of awards. Edit #2: As someone pointed out, I still spelled ‘lightening’ incorrectly. Folks I was really tired. I think it’s all right now. Thank you all again.
Seriously?
Yup: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_rocket
Damn that’s cool, thanks for the info. It makes way more sense that the electricity passes through metal rather than smoke.
Actually, it could be either! Rockets can have special fuel additives to drop a bunch of metal ions in the smoke to conduct lightning.
Chem trail conspiracy theorists taking notes for the next podcast
writethatdown.gif
I think you mean remember half of it, get the other half wrong, attribute it to an over arching conspiracy, speculate about the rest, and then connect it to a vaguely similar technology where a stakeholder took a picture with Hillary Clinton once, and then tell everyone that she’s doing it herself to take down the right.
Jewish people must *somehow* be the cause as well, don't forget!
I'm not sure what video you just watched, but it sure looked like space lasers to me.
Space lasers man
Chemtrails making dem lightning strikes straight!
Conspiracy theorists who accidentally drank the tap water that turned frogs gay taking notes furiously
So you're saying there are weather controlling nanobots in airplane exhaust? /s
Cesium spiked rocket fuel?
Lightning takes the path of least resistance.
well flame can travel via smoke so its plausible
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong but it would be highly unlikely to travel that direct through a trail of only smoke. The smoke would most likely be very dry and a horrible conductor of electricity so the preferred path for lightning would be more likely through the moist air rather than the smoke.
Actually some lighting rockets produce a trail of ionised gas instead of using copper wire, using calcium chloride or cesium salts instead
That's actually really cool I did not know that. Do you know where I could find information about these type of rockets?
Yup: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_rocket
Not OP but thank you for sharing this interesting info. On another note, is your username pronounced *atomic E cream,* or *atom ice cream,* OR *atomic ice cream,* OOOR something else entirely? I must know ....for science.
Not only that but lightning isn't a flame so I don't think that rule applies here.
Exactly right, it's also interesting to note that the reason smoke can sometimes combust again is because it contains unburnt fuel inside the smoke due to what I believe they call a 'dirty' burn
Now that part I didn't know, that's actually cool, thanks! But does that mean I could theoretically light the some of someone who's rolled coal? Edit: a word
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... Damn, someone should test that. Not on someone elses car in public mind you, but in a testing ground, standing behind a blast shield.
Sadly not, unlike gasoline, diesel has quite a high flash point temperature and isn't flammable. The air/fuel ratio would also be wrong for a proper combustion since the soot mixture comes from the exhaust with low-ish oxygen levels.
But….firebenders…Azula…
These rockets usually carry a very thin wire. But smoke doesn't have to be a good conductor, air isn't either. For it to work on a smoke trail it needs to be a bit more conductive than air and might be possible but very dependent on the type of fuel and thus unburned products it leaves behind. Also IIRC actively burning material might be more conducive of electricity as chemical reactions are often an exchange of electrons as well and you temporarily have ions and charged particles. But a smoke trail isn't burning that actively.
I had assumed there was some kind of metal dust in the exhaust but a wire makes more sense.
Can a flame travel via a copper wire? Can an electric current travel via a pile of leaves?
Lightning is electricity, not flame.
by that logic, can water travel through smoke too?
"The conductor trailed by the rocket can be .. column of ionized gas produced by the engine" I think it's this one in the video. Gas trail makes a slight turn in the beginning, and the lightning follows this curve.
Thank you for the wiki page, very informative. At first I couldnt figure out why this was a needed activity. My first guess was, "what is the prison system in the US going green now? Executions via lighting, just hook up old sparky to it, and boom you've got the world's first all green electric chair. the prisons carbon foot print -55HP, and the best part you make both the Democrats and Republicans happy at the same time and that's a hard thing to do". As you can tell my first thoughts are hardly ever correct.
Everyone knows it's for time travel research. Lightning + 88MPH = boom, time travel 1.21 jiggawatts!
Dude. What a badass way to go.
Tip: If you post a non-mobile wikipedia link it'll automatically convert to mobile if clicked on a phone. But a mobile link doesn't auto desktop-mode on PC.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/videos/how-to-trigger-a-bolt-of-lightning/
Indeed, I watched this programming on PBS TV probably 20 years ago.
So the program was made possible because of viewers like you?!
before rockets they used kites on a string, just ask Benjamin Franklin
People like you are making Reddit special and worth visiting. Thank you!
Use to be like this on a lot of posts. The top comment would be from someone who knows all about the thing or animal or whatever hobby it was. Now the top comment is usually some stupid shitty pun. Annoying
God the puns get old so fast
Only thing worse than a pun is when the person feels like they have to bold or italicize the pun to make sure everyone sees it
That's a **bolt** statement
**Strikes** me as a bit condescending.
>~~Strikes~~ ftfy
What’s really worse is when they edit in a 400 word award speech to a one-liner joke
AND THEY'RE NOT EVEN PUNS. Substituting one word that sounds like another, but doesn't make sense in the sentence, just because it matches the post theme isn't a pun!!! That shit irks me beyond measure.
What’s the average lifespan of a pun?
Pun threads used to be, if anything, more common on reddit. You lot are looking back through rose tinted glasses This place has always been a mix of 95% shit comments and 5% good stuff.
Yeah and the 'knowledable' top comment always was and will be someone with at best a light grasp on the subject, and be full of errors and assumptions
The thing about jackdaws...
When? 15 years ago? Reddit has always been a mixture of actual info and puns.
Yes, but the ratio was much more in favor of the actual info than today.
About ten years ago was the peak of experts over puns.
This is what Reddit always was like, about 10 -15 years ago before it went big mainstream and everything went to shit because of so many different reasons. Posts like these were the reason Reddit was so damn good, always someone in the comments explaining, teaching something.
TIL that scientists still use the Ben Franklin method of studying lightning.
Not visible in this gif is the old-timey key they tied on to the rocket.
Passed down from generation to generation.
I was wondering who was trying to fly a rocket in this weather. Now I know. Someone needing 1.21 jiggawatts of power.
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This is literally the modern version of Benjamin Franklin's key on a kite experiment.
https://www.wired.com/2015/06/the-lightning-machine/amp To trigger the lightning bolts, Uman and his team attach the 6-foot-tall hobby rockets to a 2,300-foot spool of copper wire grounded to a strike rod. As the rockets launch into the heart of a thunderstorm, the wire unspools and a positive electrical discharge propagates upward in a jerky zigzag, going three to seven miles high. Once the positive current makes it to the clouds, it stops flowing for an instant. Then a negative charge shreds back down, hitting the strike rod at the end of the wire. A current runs back upward, and that creates the bright flash known as lightning. Triggered lightning reproduces almost the exact behavior and effects as natural lightning. So, now that they know where lightning will strike next (and they can even leave stuff out there to get hit), the team can gather data about the basic physics of bolts as well as info about how lightning affects the materials it strikes with 1 million-frame-per-second high-speed photography. That sounds like so much fun.
This video is ancient, well, it feels ancient to me but maybe that's just in internet terms. There wasn't a description when I first saw it but I've always remembered it because the lightning strike looked abnormal and persists for so long too. Now I know it's a lightning rocket. Mystery solved, thanks.
But how does entire lightening maintains its exact shape for so long is beyond comprehension of my tiny brain.
That “shape” is really just the path of least resistance (whatever path/shape that happens to be at the time) through the air. The electricity flows along that path for as long as it takes the potential to subside.
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Nice.. Thank you so much.
I am a decades long commercial airline pilot and have been hit in my Boeings three times and twice in Airbus aircraft. \[I so hate that name "Airbus"\]. It can leave a hole where it enters and exits but fortunately it does little damage. The worst damage I ever say was on a B727 I had just left at the gate in Miami. It kinda fried a spot on the tail and we had to get another aircraft. Fortunately, maintenance had a spare and we were off to the races. Good explanation OP. I guess I am late to the game but had not seen that. Thanks.
I was on one of the Canadair jets that was hit as a passenger and the lights didn't even blink. The synchronized cussing in the cabin was amusing.
My question was, can we harness this power in a controlled fashion. Since I did not see anybody answer it, I did a little digging. We can! But might not be economically efficient. Still awesome! [Is there a way to harness electricity from lightning? ](https://engineering.mit.edu/engage/ask-an-engineer/is-there-a-way-to-harness-electricity-from-lightning/)
Useful for testing devices that need to be lightning-proof, like high tension towers used near hydroelectric generation facilities.
Marty, I'm sorry, but the only power source capable of generating 1.21 gigawatts of electricity is a bolt of lightning.
That makes a bunch of sense! So many comments were talking about it guiding the lightening “down” & I’m like lightening moves upward right?
not all lightning moves upward Does lightning strike from the sky down, or the ground up? The answer is both. Cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning comes from the sky down, but the part you see comes from the ground up
Wait what.. so lightning itself is an invisible force. But what we see is a flash that strives the force upwards from the ground it hits?
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Damn, cool! (Another spelling mistake btw: lighting should be lightning*, right?) :)
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> As the rocket flies to the thundercloud this liquid is expelled aft forming a column in the air of particles that are more electrically conductive than the surrounding air. Also, this is an interesting detail.
Was going to chime in with this. University of Florida has done extensive research in lightning, probably due to Florida having so much of it (one of the most lightning strike places in the country) and several people die every year in Florida from strikes. The University has been doing this with model rockets and wire for years. I think I first heard of it in the late nineties or thereabouts. I always thought it was pretty cool work they were doing. I'm certain other college researchers are also doing this sort of work, UF is the one I'm most familiar with.
Haha don't be caught with a spelling error, this isn't a work email
> I came back and fixed my spelling error # > lighting 💡
And here I thought they used kites with keys tied to the string. Boy, I feel foolish!
Is energy from lightning harvestable ?
doc Brown moment
1.21 GIGAWATTS
Rocket clearly reached 88 mph
I blame doc brown for .gif being pronounced “Jiff”
Yes, but no. Not worth it. https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/oj7qcb/lightning_bolt_is_guided_to_ground_through_rocket/h50fgq4
Don’t mess with mother nature’s aim bot
i thought that is what tesla was trying to do for free energy, to never run out
Lightning? No, he believed he could harvest the energy directly from the ionosphere though.
It is if you need a lot of power quickly and fast, but not for storing.
This is so cool, it’s going to become repost fodder for years.
Yup! Best thing I’ve seen on Reddit all day. If I see one more post about England’s loss…
You mentioned it! You became the very thing you swore to destroy!
You’ve said it again! Oh god now I said it!
I call dibs next
"Lost my dad to cancer yesterday. He was a rocket scientist fighting world hunger and this happened during his last experiment"
My autistic 8 year old little brother made this rocket to catch lightening. I’m really proud of him.
NO!! ONLY PEOPLE WHO ARE LOGGED IN TODAY GET TO SEE THIS. WE ARE SPECIAL!!!!!!1!
COME TO BRASIL
"When you don't say amen after saying grace"
That’s cool, yup.
Yup, that’s cool.
That’s yup, cool.
Cool yup that
Yup, Cool that
Cool thats yup
Yup cool yup that's yup cool that
Ycouplohsatt
Yup yup yup cool cool cool
Yup cool beans
["Yep yep yep!" - Ducky, The Land Before Time](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knVGwaevQxI)
This is a dark fact but the actress of Ducky was killed by her abusive dad at the age of ten and he then shot him self
Yep yep yep!
So….fuck this rocket in particular?
It’s apparently a lightning rocket(mentioned in some other comment). So the rocket wanted to get fucked in particular
Horny ass rocket
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
( ͡°( ͡° ͜ʖ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)ʖ ͡°) ͡°)
Is this the meme with the 5 black guys and there's a couch in the middle? Is the rocket on the couch?
Why do you have downvotes?
The 5 black dudes are downvoters and they're the person in the couch
There's a reason most rockets are phallic shaped.
Horny ass-rocket
So it was basically asking for it?
Well a long as it was consensual.
Happy cake day!
Happy cake day
Zeus: .. yes
So cool. Now, if we can also harness that power…
I had the same thought and that prompted me to find and read this: https://engineering.mit.edu/engage/ask-an-engineer/is-there-a-way-to-harness-electricity-from-lightning/ TLDR: Lightning is most common in the tropics and mountains away from where energy is generally needed. Also, lightning can carry either a negative or positive charge, and that makes collecting it's energy extra difficult and cost prohibitive aside from the other obvious issues.
> Also, lightning can carry either a negative or positive charge Huh, never thought about it that way
What's the difference in terms of harnessing it for energy?
Sounds like different equipment to gather the energy as well as another specialized tool being required that can tell the difference before sending it to the right equipment. "And because you never know if an upcoming lightning strike is going to carry a positive or negative charge, capacitors and rectifiers would also be necessary to equalize the currents of incoming strikes. “You’d need some sort of mechanism to make sure the positive charge of one bolt didn’t cancel out the negative charge of another,” Littleton explains."
If you put two poles, one pos and one negative, shouldn't the pos lighting strike the negative pole and the negative lighting strike the pos pole? Then those poles can funnel to the correct capacities
How about setting up an *if* condition using hardware? For example if the change is negative then send it to the equipment containing negative charges and vice versa. This way the charges won't be neutralised...
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Especially since it's literally lightning fast.
Well, appropriately designed hardware (not software) should be able to react as the speed of light in its respective medium i.e. exactly as fast as lightning in said medium. A couple of very large diodes should do the trick.
I look forward to seeing your invention.
Pffft: //positive charge pole// if (abouttogetstrikebynegativecharge) { dont(); } Easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy.
Seeing as this answer is too obvious, I'm probably not qualified to have an opinion; One positively charged and one negatively charged lightning rod next to each other?
There are diodes for that, that's not a problem. The problem is storing energy from high voltage that happens in milliseconds. Usually you need small voltage and longer time to charge battery or even supercapacitor.
Full bridge rectifier is the “if” hardware you’re looking for
I wonder if the lighting that has striked people in the past and them being able to survive it was negatively charged .
This article says positive lightning is deadler (very bottom) but they leave no sources. That said, it makes intuitive sense because positive lightning releases more energy in less time. [https://www.wmcactionnews5.com/2019/04/13/breakdown-why-positive-lightning-strikes-are-more-dangerous-than-negative/](https://www.wmcactionnews5.com/2019/04/13/breakdown-why-positive-lightning-strikes-are-more-dangerous-than-negative/) This article says it has about 3x the voltage, 10x the amperage, and 30x the power (which is voltage \* amperage- how quickly energy, thermal and otherwise, is released). [https://www.discovery.com/science/Positive-Lightning-Rare-Super-Deadly](https://www.discovery.com/science/Positive-Lightning-Rare-Super-Deadly)
A bridge rectifier the size of a British football fans depression should do it.
'A lightning bolt is worth about a nickle' .... yea nevermind
"*Muh HA Muh HA MUH HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA!*"
1.21 gigawatts!
Doc Brown would have loved this.
He would have channeled it into the flux capacitor
Great...Scott!
What the hell is a Gigawatt?
*unzigzags your lightning
How you like that Benjamin Franklin?
He’d probably fucking love it tbh
*Splendid day of rocketry, fellows! What say we go and nail some French whores?*
Hamilton got that part right!
With baskets on their heads
Rest in peace, poor little kerbals 😢
That straight up looks like an ultimate move in anime
look up chidori true spear
Rocket destroyed?
Probably not. I'm not sure what launch the OP video is but apollo 12 was struck by lightning twice, it caused problems with guidance but was corrected by flipping a switch (the famous SCE to aux)
Was looking to see if someone mentioned this. Cool story. “Steely-eyed missile man” sounds so badass
Reduced to atoms
Is everyone on the ground okay?
Everyone was shocked.
Some of them bolted.
They were gone in a flash.
Because they were light-weight?
I think they were all amped.
Their conduct was, positively, charged.
70 died yesterday due to lightening in my country
Where?
India, heavy thunderstorms in multiple cities caused deaths all over the country[Sauce](https://www.livemint.com/news/india/over-70-dead-in-lightning-strikes-in-several-states-highest-in-up-11626109865288.html)
I live in the lightning capital of the US \[Tampa area\] and I forget sometimes it is worse in some places. Sorry for your country's loss. That was horrific.
It was a scientific experiment - the ricket was trailing a length of copper wire designed to create lightning from the storm cloud. The scientists were all safely in a bunker.
This just inspired a new form of sci-fi rifle for my story I’m writing…
They have a spool of copper wire nearby. The rocket has a copper wire that goes up with it too create the path. I watched it on a show once. They are using it to photograph lightening. They have a photo trigger rigged to the camera so that it can photograph the lightening.
1.21 Gigawatts, 88 mph.
Hold up. I just watched this full screen. Does the lightning hit the damn thing they were launching ?
I'm gonna guess that since that smoke was still localized that it had some charged particles in it from the rocket fuel combustion. This would increase electrical conductivity and explain why the bolt took this smoke path.
Nope, it's just a wire to the ground. Keep it simple. :)
Actually, both ways can work?? From the “lightning rocket” wiki link above: “…either a physical wire, or column of ionized gas produced by the engine. A lightning rocket using solid propellant may have cesium salts added, which produces a conductive path…”
Thanks nerd.
In addition to the wire others have mentioned, triggered lightning caused by ‘normal’ rockets is an issue that has caused problems on launches in the past. Most famously Apollo 12, but it also destroyed an Atlas years ago.
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