Thread: Fact or Fiction
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Old 08-December-2007, 04:22 AM
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The film was the Kodak E-3 (Ektachrome) emulsion on the then-secret Estar polyester base. Estar was developed as a film base for the Project Corona spy satellite film cartridges and was formulated to operate in extremes of temperature.

Estar is still used today and can be purchased from Kodak in a variety of formats and with a variety of emulsions.

The E-3 emulsion is not especially sensitive to cold extremes, but will begin to exhibit color shifting and other adverse effects at the hotter extremes.

It's important to realize that the film never got very hot or very cold. Heat transfer in a vacuum doesn't work the way intuition says. The film wasn't in an ambient medium (i.e., atmosphere) that would transfer heat to or away from it. The only heat transfer to and from the film was by conduction through the magazine, and slightly by radiation from the inside surfaces of the magazine case. The magazine in turn would be heated and cooled only by radiative effects. The camera and magazine bodies were coated with the same thermal coating that is used on older Thermos bottles, with the slightly mottled appearance.

There is a long history of using photographic film in space environments. The people who are telling you photographic film won't survive in space simply don't understand the physics involved or the actual makeup of the film.
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