Apollo stage separations, cold war spy satellites, and more

August 16, 2022 2:31 PM

Fran Blanche (previously, previouslyer) goes into detail about the history of the film cameras and film recovery pods used in the early Apollo missions. SLYT, main video runs about 10 minutes, with raw footage after the credits.
posted by wesleyac (4 comments total)

I really appreciate Fran's efforts to digitize and archive her film collection, and I share her frustration with the copyright trolls and YouTube's "Welp, we tried doing nothing, and that didn't work," approach to fighting it, that make her butcher the audio so that it can stay up.
posted by xedrik at 3:55 PM on August 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

Always down to learn as much as we can about aerial photography, which has always been so tied to US DOD operations you're never quite sure what the genuine history is. But dropping a film canister from the upper atmosphere remains a romantic notion to me.
posted by eustatic at 7:43 PM on August 16, 2022 [1 favorite]

I’m just imagining the recovery failures sitting on the ocean floor waiting for someone to come along.

Hurry up, treasure hunters - Ektachrome ages badly.
posted by skyscraper at 10:37 PM on August 16, 2022 [1 favorite]

When I read "Apollo stage separations", my first thought was "live at the Apollo!", and that this was about the theatre stage somehow separating. And I wondered why film recovery pods were necessary.
posted by heatherlogan at 5:50 AM on August 17, 2022