Walk on the Moon in IMAX 3D 191
HaveNoMouth writes "NASA, Lockheed Martin, and Tom Hanks are making an IMAX 3D movie about the Apollo moon landings to give viewers something like the actual experience of being on the moon. Complete with actors playing astronauts, mockups of the Lunar Excursion Module, and fake moon surface, this looks to be a real kick. The website for the movie itself is all shockwave, but it contains some nice behind-the-scenes photos of the production. Here's a QuickTime trailer. All you lunar hoax conspiracy theorists out there can just consider this the remake, with 2005-class special effects."
Re:Boom boom (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:Plate Tectonics (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course the Soviets actually provide the most compelling evidence that we did go to the Moon - their utter and complete silence. It seems strange that at the height of the Cold War, the United States biggest enemy would be completely silent and not say a word. You would have thought that if it is so obvious from the photographic and video record that we didn't go to the Moon, that the evil commies would have been all over it. But there is nothing.
Re:Spark that interest (Score:2, Insightful)
And what's so awe-inspiring about it? We put men on the fricking moon almost 40 years ago. I'm supposed to be amazed that, in only FORTY years, we managed to stick a little machine on Mars?
Sure, it's cool. But hardly awe-inspiring.
Re:Is this an ad? (Score:2, Insightful)
What's next an article extolling the refreshing thirst quenching properties of new Coca-Cola Free?
Re:Spark that interest (Score:5, Insightful)
It's difficult to fathom the fact that a collection of atoms formed together to produce you in such a fashion that you can create such a statement. Life is utterly amazing in that regard. We're having an argument. THAT is awe-inspiring.
How can the idea of having overcome so many obstacles, arguably way before our time, traveled such a distance, and achieved such a feat. The idea that there's a massive rock orbiting our tiny little planet is crazy as it is but that we were able to get people there is insane.
Now I think that our progress in getting people more than 365 times as far (mars versus the moon) has been rather astounding. We managed, on only our second shot, to hit a target as small as mars (technically we 'hit' it twice) from literally ~50 million miles away. We have photographs taken from the surface of a completely different planet.
You're amazingly desensitized by tv, media, movies, music, videogames... i dunno what.
Send an IMAX camera to the moon (Score:3, Insightful)
Sendng and returning an IMAX camera to the moon is an idea that has stuck in my mind for a long time although I know it's impossible. At least you would know what you are looking at is the Real Thing and not a soundstage reproduction. Just the behaviour of the dust in the air is going to scream "fake!" to me.
Re:Spark that interest (Score:5, Insightful)
Space travel is the same way. So we punched through the glass ceiling (so to speak) but we've been focusing our energy of late on sustaining life in a vastly different environment. The trip to the moon was roughly 3 days to, 3 days on, and 3 days to return home. The trip to mars is roughly a 6 year round trip? There are significant obstacles that have to be overcome before we can afford to send live humans out there. Not only that, but because of the length of each experimental trial, 40 years would only afford... 6? MAX (granted multiple trials can be undertaken simultaneously, shorter peices of the whole, etc, etc, but the point is made, and I can't picture anything less than full scale, full length simulations).
Food is an issue. Air is an issue. Water is an issue. Muscle atrophy is an issue. The list goes on. All of these things are being investigated at the ISS, and the MIR as well I presume.
In this day and age NASA can't afford to 'screw up' any more so I don't blame them for taking their good old time getting on track for mars. I say send lots of probes that can't die. If I were them I'd send a few monkeys with no families (you know, the hobo monkeys) up first as well.
Re:Spark that interest (Score:3, Insightful)
In the late 50s and 1960s our leadership was inspired by big ideas -- beating the Russians, exploring new frontiers, accomplishing a shared goal that was meaningful. A lot of this was a leadership mentality that was shaped by our leadership's more general education and exposure to the collective drive needed to be successful in WW II.
Unfortunately we now have a leadership that's inspired by lawyers, MBAs and other technocrats who only manipulate details, they aren't inspired by anything more than personal material gain and the maintenance of power. Asking them to support a goal with more philosophical inspiration and common cause than tax reform is unlikely.
And this is to say nothing for the budget constraints imposed by fighting a couple of wars and bunch of other sinkholes for cash.