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:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, we have an Austrian Economic Theorist in the house. So the fact that these booms and busts happened before central or reserve banks and even banks in general is explained by? Or even that they happen in non-economic systems?
You can argue that they exacerbate them, but the evidence shows they don't cause them. In fact the evidence makes it very easy to argue that they actually make them less severe.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
You have to find all the reasons that make gutting NASA good for Obama. Along the lines of:
> No more whities in space!
> We'll take money from NASA in order to come take your guns away. Only way we can afford it.
> By gutting NASA, we'll take all the high paying jobs in the south and eliminate them.
> Rockets? In Utah? As if!
> The Overlords told me to.
The crazier the better. Then you get the Teabaggers/Republinuts to demand more NASA funding. Because n
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: (Score:2)
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.
So very, very, VERY wrong. The only reason you say that is because standards keep ratcheting up. A cheap car today costs the same as one made fifty years ago (with inflation), but the quality is much, much, much better (despite what old fogies would have you believe). How about calculators? A cheap, high quality four function calculator costs a few pennies today. In 1950 they were expensive office appliances that needed frequent repair. The same goes for nearly every consumer good you can think of. Sure, bo
Re: (Score:1)
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?
The market delivers what the market demands (Score:2)
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?
Of course, given the choice between expensive quality and cheap crap, the vast majority of consumers buy the cheap crap every time. If you try and build stuff designed to last for decades, nobody buys it and you go out of business. Sucks for the tiny minority which is actually willing to fund quality, of course.
To give a concrete example: Modern photocopiers are basically just big printers. They're the only printers left which have reasonable cost per page and are designed to last for millions of pages.
Re: (Score:3)
My experience has been the opposite. When I was born we had tube TVs which broke down regularly when tubes burned out. The picture tubes CRT got dimmer over time and also burned spots on the screen if you weren't careful. Since moving to solid state, I've never had a TV (even CRT tube TVs) die on me. I had two TVs (solid state + CRT) from 1982 that were still working fine until I gave them away last year. The LCD screens that I've had (on lap
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, TVs from the '80s were way better than those of the '60s and early '70s - but cheaper processes (hello, China!) through the late '80s and '90s fixed that, and since moving to LCD things have got very shit again. I do not believe that the backlights in your LCDs have not dimmed, unless you barely use them or you only moved to LCD very recently. Backlights are simply not built to stay bright for as many hours as recent CRTs will chug along.
But it's not just the main components which die sooner: "advance
Re: (Score:2)
I think you and I may be from a dying generation.
I got my first computer in 1999, and with it came a 19" Gateway CRT monitor. When I got it it had already been used daily for a year.
That monitor lasted for 8 years with very few problems. The last year, the screen picture would bend inwards like an hourglass, but if you smacked the side of it that fixed things nicely. One day, about 10 years after it was purchased originally, the hardest of technical taps would not restore the screen. I junked it and replace
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
I'll say!
Apparently the best of the best ground-based Shuttle motion imagery [youtube.com] is 480p. :-/
Re: (Score:1)
...when's the last time you saw government deliver a good, cheap, quality product on time?...
Hoover Dam? Maybe we should call it the Dam Government.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I was talking to my 10 year old about this subject recently. I told him that in his lifetime, I can see him taking a trip to the moon. I kind of think that this stagnation has been what caused us to not have the space station from the beginning of 2001. If the private sector was doing it, it would already be done. Build in space, like the old Star Trek (why they changed that in the new one I cannot fathom.)
The funny thing was my son just not getting what I was saying, he said "but I don't want to be an
Re:Nice (Score:4, Informative)
Obama didn't cancel the shuttle, Bush did, and yes we do have a plan. It is the SLS.
http://www.universetoday.com/75522/president-signs-nasa-2010-authorization-act/ [universetoday.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I am going to see if Matt can get me the original files in higher resolution to upload.
Re:480p? (Score:5, Insightful)
Total. Nerd. Porn.
Re: (Score:2)
If that were a troll, your nose would have fallen off.
Simply an expression of delight and awe that we've put that thing together.
Back into the basement, son. Come on out when you're feeling better.
Re: (Score:1)
Hmm. . . It appears I misunderstood the tone of your post. Sorry.
Re: (Score:2)
First. (Score:1, Offtopic)
What's the point? (Score:3)
What's the point of bragging about how the program is rendered in 'the highest definition available' - and then putting it on You Tube in crappy low definition?
Re:What's the point? (Score:4)
It really is stunning how NASA can have the most exciting, awe-inspiring projects and footage of any government project that has ever existed, and yet it falls to an engineer to salvage this incredible footage, edit and narrate it (with his engineer friends). I've watched countless series of documentaries about NASA's various space programs and have never come across such excellent footage, so well explained.
Re: (Score:2)
and yet it falls to an engineer to salvage this incredible footage, edit and narrate it (with his engineer friends). I've watched countless series of documentaries about NASA's various space programs and have never come across such excellent footage, so well explained.
Ever talk to a newspaper reporter and then read his story? Primary sources are ideal.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
[citation needed]
Re:What's the point? (Score:4, Funny)
[citation needed]
[watch the video]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Troll? Hardly.
I did watch the video. It was great.
But before I could watch (Youtube was having buffering issues on the 480p stream), I went in search of this elusive "high definition" version, and was instead finding comments from the original poster like this: [youtube.com]
I am not sure if there is any plans to release a DVD/Blu Ray for the public, but I will see what I can find out.
I don't know about anyone else, but I don't see how "I am not sure" and "it's coming to DVD!!@!" are in any way synonymous.
More recently,
Re: (Score:3)
How is that any different? DVD is only 720x480.
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Informative)
OMG (Score:1)
Re:OMG (Score:5, Interesting)
That rocked! I can't believe I'm the first to say that.
I have to agree. I know I took a while to reply... about 45 minutes, actually... after I had watched the video, spellbound by what I was seeing.
Wow.
Even as a Youtube video, the views and detail was amazing. If the people who put this video together happen to read this thread, thank you for creating this. If you could upload it as a high quality version and/or make a DVD available, that would be even better! But as it is, I'm simply amazed at what I saw and loved the explanations along the way.
Re: (Score:1)
i predict that there will be a lot of 'me 2' type replies on this one....
i agree, even as a youtube video the stuff was very compelling.... as was mentioned much of it was stuff i would have likely never seen before.. and hadnt.
i thought i knew what a launch looked like.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
In the long run survival of the human species is not possible if we limit ourselves to this planet. Even if we don't screw up the planet ourselves (climate change) sooner or later a large rock will come along with our name on it.
Re: (Score:1)
You and your liberal arts major simply don't comprehend how fucked up the political system is.
Re: (Score:3)
What does the shuttle 'imaging' team have to show us?
Images of the shuttle.
If JFK had the balls to make that call, and the governers of this country respect him, why have we not been back there?
If only someone whould have written the reasons down. We could call it history [imdb.com] and stored those historical documents historical documents [imdb.com] into places we could call libraries [imdb.com] perhaps located in a complex called a university [imdb.com] and people could come to look at them and learn [imdb.com] why decisions were made.
It needs to be preserved, and expanded. Expansion is not possible while people are still fighting over things as trivial as religion, philosophy, and wealth. All three are fairly relative when you consider survival, are they not?
Sorry, I'd love to answer but after college I try to not get high before 8 AM.
Where's the HD version please? (Score:2)
Re:Where's the HD version please? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Director's Cut (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
It isn't polite to do that. It's not nice. Have you no shame?
P2P (Score:1)
If ever there was a justification for bittorrent, this is it. Why stick this on Youtube with crappy resolution, when you could post a torrent file and seed for a while.
The video could be public domain, high-def, and inspiring to young geeks, instead of being lame.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I would gladly pay for this, would be nice if NASA could fund itself in ways other than just congress.