A cinematic archive of the machines that escaped Earth.
Every liquid engine, every stage, every machine that crossed the Kármán line — rebuilt in true scale from real flight data. This is not a gallery. It is an archive of escape velocity.
A single-page, zero-build, offline-capable WebGL archive of launch vehicles, built with vanilla JavaScript and three.js. No framework, no bundler, no tracking, no analytics, no cookies.
| Section | Contents |
|---|---|
| 01 Pulse | Live launch telemetry strip + 8 state-of-launch statistics |
| 02 Lineage | 43 historical firsts on a drag-scrolled timeline, 11 era filters, and a dot map of the launch sites that cross-highlights the timeline |
| 03 Fleet | 21 launch vehicles as true-scale procedural 3D models, with side-by-side compare mode and a telemetry overlay |
| 04 Anatomy | A full orbital rocket dissected in scroll-synced SVG |
| 05 Data | 4 canvas charts on thrust, payload, cost-per-kg and the trade space — each with per-vehicle toggles |
| 06 Engines | 17 rocket engines with real thrust, Isp, chamber pressure and year, fully sortable |
| 07 Schedule | Countdown to the next confirmed launch + a 17-mission manifest |
| 08 Shock | 21 numbers that don't compute |
Every figure is cross-checked against Wikipedia, NASA, ESA, JAXA, Roscosmos,
CNSA, ISRO, manufacturer documentation, Spaceflight Now, and Jonathan
McDowell's launch statistics. Raw research notes live in data/.
Vehicles modelled include the V-2, R-7/Sputnik, Saturn V, Soyuz, Titan IIIE, Space Shuttle, Proton, Delta IV Heavy, Falcon 9, Electron, Starship, SLS, Ariane 5, Long March 5 and more — from Peenemünde 1942 to the present.
- three.js r181 (vendored, MIT)
- Vanilla ES modules — no React, no Vue, no build step
- Canvas 2D for all data charts
- SVG for the anatomy dissection
- Google Fonts (Space Grotesk / Inter / JetBrains Mono / Anton), degrading cleanly to system fonts when blocked
Any static server works:
npx serve .
# or
python -m http.server 8000The repository includes server.mjs, a dependency-free Node static server
with correct ES-module MIME types, if you'd rather not install anything:
node server.mjs # → http://127.0.0.1:4111/Note:
threeis resolved through an import map tovendor/three/three.module.js, so the site runs fully offline and has no CDN dependency.
Built and tuned to run at 60 FPS on integrated/entry-level 2015-era graphics hardware (verified on an AMD Radeon R7 200 series, WebGL 2.0 via ANGLE/D3D11). Strategies used:
- Geometry is generated procedurally at runtime, not shipped as assets
- Instanced and merged geometry where repetition allows
- Pixel ratio capped and canvases resized on a debounce
- Scroll work is transform-only, and gated behind
IntersectionObserver prefers-reduced-motionrespected throughout
No licence granted. All rights reserved — not for redistribution or reuse.
Built by zeroranker. Issues and contributions welcome.