'Moon Machines'- TV series: thoughts of forum?

[icarusinbound]

The TV channel Discovery Science is currently showing a series called 'Moon Machines'. These are slick productions, pitched at giving a tech-depth insight into the equipment+ infrastructure of the Apollo programme.

I've only watched the episode about the CM on-board navigation computer, but would be very interested to hear opinions from the forum if they've seen any of it, as a broadcast or via DVD.

Opinions on all aspects of the programme I've just watched would be especially welcome.

[lux]

Looks like they're on YouTube:
http://tinyurl.com/a6l7rrr

[icarusinbound]

Excellent, that simplifies things.

Perhaps I'm becoming over-sensitised, but arguably I'm detecting a Gumpian retro-historical feel about much of the archive footage.

I realise that it's been out for a few years (the produced series, I mean), but, there are elements of content/framing that although they will have been selected for resonance for a modern audience, just do not feel entirely authentic.

Like certain other past major world events, it is surprising what can eventually be tracked-down from the vaults....apparently. Where was all this detailed human-story narrative footage before? Where have all these Cap Comm / MIT veterans been hiding meantime? An observation addressed to out North American members: I sincerely hope that all these ex-NASA grandees have been getting constantly feted since, well, the '50s, as I'm totally unaware of this level of testamony having been aired before. Hopefully my/our European isolation has just meant we've all missed an ongoing veneration, and this is not some form of validatory back-cataloging that we see.

In the mid-ground continuum, say from 1975 to 2000?, the only film footage that NASA ever seemed to show of Houston (or any ground facilities) was the balding back-heads of shirt-sleeved caucasian chain-smokers dutifully staring into cathodic complexity, with the obligatory pensive vignettes for launches/landings. Now we see whole domestic scenes, hear stories of mythic improbability (so...software was 'new'....and the conclusion was reached that the whole on-board jurassic programming was suffering from bloatware....therefore they handed it all to a sole keen young blade who saved the day by editing the whole thing down and making it work. He certainly looks like a man ahead of his time...hmm). The token single female engineer 'back in the day' , holding a megalithic wire+ferrite 'memory card', invests us with hollow nuggets of kindergarten computing factoids, but manages to be exactly the kind of '70s girl-scientist eyecandy in her b/w archive shots to keep us engaged.

Is this all post-"Apollo 13", the (official) movie? All in the footsteps of HBO's "From the Earth to the Moon"?

Has there just been a massive splurge of archival footage found langishing in the vaults of NASA, that has been artfully-restored and reverently offered-up as a full record of what happened?

Or: does this documentary contain elements that may just be excessively 'to camera', and too produced....perhaps in every sense of the word?

[icarusinbound]

Some more apparently-contemporary footage, this time of the 'dune buggy special', - "Apollo 16: Nothing so Hidden 1972 NASA Fifth Moon Landing, John Young, Lunar Rover". I make no comment regarding the claimed edit/splice that's referred to in a distracting way within the 'top comments' section.

There's so much weird casual footage and action captured here, it's impossible really to know where to start analysing this.

Again, where is all this footage springing from? Has it been in the public domain over the decades? This all seems so much more detailed and crisp when compared to the few seconds worth of grainy images previously served-up as documentary footage. Still highly questionable, of course. I especially love the precise rotations and halting of the LM in mid-space, as it lines-up for docking. Draped in what looks like wet cardboard, preparing to mate with a shiny tin-can, it's an origami angular aluminum fortune cookie crossed with a cockroach.

Please watch- is this original, or majorly digitally remastered?


full link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMFSoMkLhic

[hoi.polloi]

In the mid-ground continuum, say from 1975 to 2000?, the only film footage that NASA ever seemed to show of Houston (or any ground facilities) was the balding back-heads of shirt-sleeved caucasian chain-smokers dutifully staring into cathodic complexity, with the obligatory pensive vignettes for launches/landings. Now we see whole domestic scenes, hear stories of mythic improbability (so...software was 'new'....and the conclusion was reached that the whole on-board jurassic programming was suffering from bloatware....therefore they handed it all to a sole keen young blade who saved the day by editing the whole thing down and making it work. He certainly looks like a man ahead of his time...hmm). The token single female engineer 'back in the day' , holding a megalithic wire+ferrite 'memory card', invests us with hollow nuggets of kindergarten computing factoids, but manages to be exactly the kind of '70s girl-scientist eyecandy in her b/w archive shots to keep us engaged.

I think you're right. 9/11 and 7/7 helped pave the way for people's tolerance of sims and massive amounts of false data describing their own communities. After these massive psychological operations/studies, they've learned that people just don't ask many questions in our media glut. They can proceed to clean up, emphasize, polish and set forth new trophies and self-congratulations about the non-achievements of NA$A.

Hence they decided they could now talk openly about novelistic stories that may or may not have actually happened. Perhaps this special existed in the 70's, does it matter? The title "Apollo 16: Nothing so Hidden" reads as "Nothing to see here, move along, absorb subliminally and move along."

Perhaps that's what a lot of those military cubicle people do all day, just sift through old information and find stuff to capture the imaginations of the modern paradigm and hold it on old fake history that's biased to the government's melodrama. Of course you are right that without an eye-witness telling us they saw this in the 70's, our modern image capabilities make it moot. It's presented now because it's designed to manipulate us.