Is a version of this footage available directly from NASA, in the public domain and without the commentary/etc.? I've searched around the NASA video archives a bit and haven't found a version on their site. Or did this company, Spacecraft Films, do the transfer from the 16mm film themselves?
As alien as this video is, I must say it's one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen as it directly represents the power of human knowledge. If I would fit into that camera's case, I would give anything to watch something like this in person.
You'd just see some blinding white light for a few seconds and then maybe nothing else for the rest of your life. Our human eyes and brains limit us from perceiving even everyday things with the majesty they deserve.
Even popping water balloons looks amazing in high speed video. On YouTube, there is a community of people doing silly things with high speed cameras that makes for stimulating watching:
I wouldn't dismiss our perception as lacking majesty :) That would be very depressing. Subjectivity aside, however, you're right – what we experience is determined in part by the constrains of our nervous system and perception organs (remember the rapidly spinning fan blades that look like a disk?). But, this is just the conditions on life, a fact to which we need to adjust, for we cannot change it.
It's also worth pointing out that for humans, this is where science comes in :)
The slow motion videos illustrate very convincingly that we are always omitting data. I love them for that. One cannot watch them and not be persuaded into a sense of how unavoidably probabilistic our inferences are, as well as into a sense of wonderment and curiosity. They are both desirable responses, because they are key to sanity.
Those who like this will probably like the short documentary "Ascent - Commemorating Shuttle" produced by a some NASA engineers. It uses similar footage from launchpad cams, with lots of technical commentary.
This video is well worth watching. I almost skipped it, expecting the same old launch footage, but it is a slow motion closeup of the engines and exhaust with very interesting commentary. (You can skip the last couple minutes without missing much, though.)
Nothing, I believe, better illustrates the human potential than the space race that culminated with the Apollo lunar landings. We should be doing more of that.
A well defined objective, successfully completed, is a well-defined objective terminated.
What a fantastic mountain of effort, focused dedicated enthusiasm, and skill-sets, left adrift and carelessly abandoned. I have read schematics of some Apollo entire sub-systems, have completely disappeared.
And then there is the decades long disappointment. We see few Shuttle posts on HN.
Indeed. New objectives should have been set. The shuttles, while a marvelous achievement of engineering, were ruined by the politics around them - so many different mission profiles they were designed to do that nothing was left that could be done practically. And yes - going to LEO is not nearly as inspirational as going where no one has gone before.
