Informative Shuttle Ascent Video 69
minterbartolo points out this video, produced by Matt Melis at the Glenn Research Center, excerpting from its description: "Photographic documentation of a Space Shuttle launch plays a critical role in the engineering analysis and evaluation process that takes place during each and every mission. Motion and Still images enable Shuttle engineers to visually identify off-nominal events and conditions requiring corrective action to ensure mission safety and success. This imagery also provides highly inspirational and educational insight to those outside the NASA family. This compilation of film and video presents the best of the best ground-based Shuttle motion imagery from STS-114, STS-117, and STS-124 missions. Rendered in the highest definition possible, this production is a tribute to the dozens of men and women of the Shuttle imaging team and the 30yrs of achievement of the Space Shuttle Program."
Re:Nice (Score:4, Insightful)
Still though, when's the last time you saw government deliver a good, cheap, quality product on time? I get the feeling that in the next twenty years or so, commercial entities will be able to surpass our present status. The only hope I have on the government front is to maintain the space program legacy to encourage smart young kids to pursue something greater than themselves. Or, at least to maintain the program until it looks pathetic compared to the commercial entities in the same market.
Re:Nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? It's exactly those overarching goals that keep effing NASA up. Pretty much every other government agency gets to do it's work in a straightforward and methodical fashion without a dramatic goal - but if NASA doesn't have one, it gets flamed. (Never mind that NASA only carries the policies set by the Administration and funded by Congress.) When NASA does get to do methodical development and to work out the basics, it gets flamed for 'going around in circles'.
About the same time I last saw a good cheap quality product delivered by anyone. I.E. never. 'Cheap' is pretty much antithetical to 'good quality' for a product of any significance. (Yeah, there are some down at the end of the bell curve, like Linux, but they're exceptions and you're fooling yourself if you believe otherwise.) Most government programs do get done more or less on time and in budget, but as always you never hear about the middle of the bell curve.
Not a chance. Commercial entities aren't going any further than LEO any time soon.
In other words, you want the same mess we've always had - unsustainable, extremely expensive programs for entertainment. Why not? You get something to drool over (because it's SPACE!) and something to bitch about (because it's hard and expensive) all at once. What a bargain.
Re:480p? (Score:5, Insightful)
Total. Nerd. Porn.
Re:Nice (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What's the point? (Score:2, Insightful)
[citation needed]
Re:Nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Crap yesterday is crap today, but mid-range equipment from 30 years ago - especially electronic - was built to last and built to be repaired.
When I was born we had one main TV, and that same TV was repaired two or three times by a knowledgeable, cheap, well-known, local repair guy until its death over two decades later. None since has lasted more than 5 years without developing some niggle or dying completely.
Even at your desk, LCD longevity is a fucking joke compared to CRTs, and printers are sold disposable with ink DRM. An HP 48 has buttons as fresh today as in 1990, but an HP 49G will make you give up after a couple of hours and a 50G - after several iterations of fail - is only just about usable.
Items 30 years ago were engineered to work - that's all we knew how to do. But now we know how to do something more profitable: items today are engineered as cheaply as possible to last for the length of the warranty. It'd be uncapitalistic not to, right?