MetaFilter posts tagged with space and apollo

Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is.

loquacious — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 22:23:55 -0800

Space is really big. A perspective on the Earth and Moon from the view of a pixel.

The Lunar Orbiter's Kodak moment

prinado — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:16:01 -0800

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has returned its first images of the Apollo moon landing sites. The spacecraft’s onboard camera photographed Lunar Module descent stages at five of the six Apollo sites—11, 14, 15, 16, and 17. The Apollo 12 site will be photographed in coming weeks. The Apollo 14 image is particularly interesting: ideal lighting conditions resolve additional details, including the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package and the tracks left by the astronauts’ footprints and/or the Modularized Equipment Transporter, a 2-wheeled, rickshaw type cart for carrying around tools, cameras and sample cases on the lunar surface. These first images were captured before the spacecraft reached its final mapping orbit—future images of the Apollo sites will have two to three times greater resolution.

Land, Eagle, Land

Miko — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 06:48:18 -0800

We Chose the Moon: The JFK Library and Museum has just launched this interactive web experience using archival audio, video, photos, and recorded transmissions to re-create, in real time, the July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 mission to the moon.

Happy 40th anniversary, mankind.

sexyrobot — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:01:13 -0800

Moon Landing Tapes Found! All the videos you've seen of the first moon landing are crap. Remember, back in the day, video cameras and recorders were two different things. So it went like this: camera on moon sends footage to Australia, where it's recorded on tape (and then those tapes were lost), then downsized onto a smaller monitor, which is filmed by another video camera, uploaded to satellite, and disseminated around the world. America watches it on TV, cheers. Some of this footage is filmed off of a television onto 16mm film. This is what goes into the national archives. Crap. So, the original tapes have been found (spoiler: they never left Australia). So what, right? How good could they be, recorded back in the late 60's and all? Pretty darn good, apparently...seems recording heads were much better than the output available at the time (like playing a Blu-Ray disc on a B&W TV), and several recent projects have shown that it's possible to extract very high resolution data from these old analog tapes. How hi-rez? High enough to see Neil Armstrong's nipples get hard. (be sure to click on that picture) So when can we see this amazing footage? Probably soon.

The Solar Connection

digaman — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 09:01:23 -0800

Rethinking Earthrise. On the 40th anniversary of the NASA's Apollo 8 mission [caution: weird JFK animation], which answered Stewart Brand's epochal, LSD-inspired question "Why haven't we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet?" with an unforgettable image of a seemingly fragile and isolated blue planet, Nature editor Oliver Morton -- author of a new book on photosynthesis called Eating the Sun -- disputes the notion that the Earth is fragile and isolated. "The fragility is an illusion," he writes. "The planet Earth is a remarkably robust thing, and this strength flows from its ancient and intimate connection to the cosmos beyond. To see the photo this way does not undermine its environmental relevance -- but it does recast it."

Video and photos of spacewalks

Brandon Blatcher — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 10:31:40 -0800

The environment does terrible things to the human body and it smells. Many people go for that walk anyway. Found these while looking for video of the spacewalks from Gemini 10, 11 or 12 or any of the Apollo spacewalks (not the moonwalks), but nothing much exists, not even photos.

Unseen photos of lunar surface

GrammarMoses — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 07:21:12 -0800

In honor of this morning's impressive lunar eclipse, another moon-photo post: For decades you had to be a scholar or specialist to get access to the original Apollo flight films, most of which have been stored in freezers at Houston's Johnson Space Center. Now Arizona State University and NASA are scanning the negatives with high-resolution equipment and creating an online digital archive of downloadable images for the general public. Here are the first few, from Apollo 15. (Similar topics previously: 1, 2, 3, 4.)

Moon Camera

Chinese Jet Pilot — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 10:37:47 -0800

“When a few of the space pioneers sat down to sketch out how a practical space camera should look one of them had suddenly exclaimed: ‘That's starting to look like my Hasselblad’." NASA originally didn’t think much of space photography until Walter Schirra brought his Hasselblad 500C along on his Sigma 7 Mercury flight. Impressed by the results, NASA responded by commissioning the Hasselblad Data Camera, a stripped-down HasselBlad 500EL that accompanied all Apollo missions to the moon. In the hands of moonwalking astronauts, the Data Camera’s custom medium format film and Zeiss Biogon 5.6/60mm lens captured images of remarkable clarity, color, and sometimes composition. What's your favorite? [warning: frameset - try the "Full Hasselblad Magazines" link].

Apollo Panoramic Images

crunchland — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 13:15:00 -0800

Apollo Panoramic Images [note: Quicktime VR]

we came in peace

washburn — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 10:31:31 -0800

Moonbase Visions. You've read about and discussed NASA's plan to use new post-shuttle launch vehicles to return to the moon. But what, exactly, is the US planning to do on the moon? What would a semi-permanent moonbase look like? And why return at all? NASA's announced answers to these questions remain vague. But last year eleven sets of responses to these questions were offered to NASA in the development proposals submitted to NASA by eleven Aerospace concerns, each of which suggested different designs, missions, and philosophies for NASA's return to the moon. Some common themes:

Military: "Provide nationally assured access to orbital locations for the placement of observation systems" and "assured access to space for development of force projection systems and movements of logistics." (pdf link, p. 5) Commercial: "Commercialize space products and services" (pdf link, p.6) Public Relations: Keeping the public inspired with "regularly placed program milestones." (pdf link, p.7)

It's interesting to compare the details of these proposals. But taken together, they raise a broader question: does NASA's fear that the public will lose interest in this commercializing, militarizing, moon venture reflect an awareness that that the vision has finally been lost?

Fate has ordained...

goodnewsfortheinsane — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 06:57:12 -0800

Now that Discovery is home safe and well, let's take a moment to remember some anxious moments 36 years ago, when President Nixon had a contingency memo prepared to read in case that Neil Armstrong et al. were somehow unable to return to Earth. The forgotten memo, written by William Saffire, is from the National Archives.

Those were the days

Brandon Blatcher — Sun, 09 Jan 2005 10:14:10 -0800

Thanks to Yahoo's video search, I've spent the morning thrilling to movies from Nasa's earlier space programs. Ed White does the first american spacewalk, the crew of apollo 8 sends out a christmas message (wonder how that would play these days), Neil Armstrong goes for a walk, Buzz Aldrin gives a science lesson, John Young goes muddin', Apollo 17 lifts off from the moon. Galileo gets his due via Apollo 15, as does Kubrick, via Skylab. all this makes the Challenger explosion just incredibly sad.

Though I still don't know why searching for apollo 8 turned up gay porn and I don't wanna know.

What is really interesting though, is watching this Apollo 17 astronaut work on the moon. His body is moving in all sorts of subtle ways that highlight how odd it must be to work in lower gravity.

Apollo Lunar Surface Journal

plep — Mon, 10 Mar 2003 11:38:33 -0800

The Apollo Lunar Surface Journal. Journals, records and some images from the Apollo lunar missions.

KirkJobSluder — Thu, 07 Nov 2002 10:25:58 -0800

NASA Challenges Moon Hoax Conspiracy After decades of almost ignoring claims that the Apollo missions were hoaxed, NASA commissioned aerospace writer James Olberg to write an official rebuttle. Perhaps a bit more reasonable than the NASA Stooge, the book is aimed at the general public.

samsara — Mon, 26 Mar 2001 06:39:17 -0800

Conspiracy or not? Convinced to sit and watch FOX's show on whether we landed on the moon, I found myself wondering why there was no evidence against the hoax presented. Is this is clearly another feed on the conspiracy theories surrounding JFK's administration? Or was it just another "When cars attack?" (If so, I didn't find this as funny)