On a related note, it was refreshing to have a voice-over by a person who's actually competent. Sometimes it feels like the internet aggregate of videos is 70% silent/irrelevant music, and 29% average joe commentary.
I think it's pretty cool that they had cameras capable of recording at 500 frames per second back then. Then again they had enough technology and smart people to actually put men on the moon, so a 500 fps camera would have been a walk in the park.
In before any 'the moon-landings were faked' statements, although I would be surprised by any HN reader saying that unless tongue-in-cheek.
I think it's pretty cool that they had cameras capable of recording at 500 frames per second back then.
Harold Edgerton was doing amazing things with high-speed photography around the same time, inventing camera and flash technology that allowed for faster and faster exposures. Do check out his work if you've never seen it before.
There were special effect cameras capable of at least 300fps in use in Hollywood long before then. Insanely fast cameras were used to analyze early nuclear bomb experiments.
I wish space travel was a bigger priority, specifically for governments since they seem most capable so far. We've made so many incredible advancements in the last 20 or 30 years, it'd be awesome to see how spaceships would have evolved had we put the same amount of effort into developing them.
I always find it incredibly humbling to watch forces like that at play, even more so when we humans have managed to harness them for our own benefit.
I still get a shiver down my spine every time I hear, and feel, an F22 do a hot pass (hell even a P51 Mustang!), but something like this would be orders of magnitude more intense.
I would definitely love to see a launch in person at some point...
Its pretty amazing. Even though the shuttle is less intense than the Saturn V would have been, its still spectacular. We were a good 6-10 miles away and it felt like someone was blaring a 15" subwoofer close-by. Then you look up into the sky and it looks as if the sun is rising and you absolutely cannot believe there are 7 people strapped to the tip of that ball of fire.
Still the most powerful rocket ever built. Which is kinda cool and sad at the same time.
(The coolest piece of technology – despite all the raw power of the Saturn V – is still the Lunar Module[1]. It could land on the damn Moon and freaking start again. How cool is that?)
But getting to the Moon is still a three day ride (always will be with the technology we have) and while the Orion capsule might be a bit more spacious than the Apollo capsule it’s not all that different.
(The Orion capsule won’t fly to the Moon now but it’s the only hardware on the horizon that would have that capability.)
I would do close to anything to get a first hand view of a rocket launch. The shear force that is necessary to lift 100tons+ off the ground is a spectacle in itself.
Check around; there may be launch sites closer to you than you think. I saw a small rocket launch in Virginia that put a satellite into orbit. However, the public viewing spot was about 2-3 miles away. It was still awesome. http://www.marsspaceport.com/
