It was hot last night and I couldn't sleep.
We have a satellite dish and we can receive German channels.
2+2 = I was surfing channels last night, and stumbled on the Bayerische Fernsehen.

During the "container" programme Space Night, they were broadcasting a programme from 1968 where the Orbiting Solar Observatories were presented. There was a model in the studio and they even demonstrated the system that pointed automatically the instruments towards the Sun.

I thought that the programme was actually pretty cool: pity that they don't do something like that in Italy.

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papageno


"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)

"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)

"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)

I was wondering how often in the US they'd broadcast a program from 1968, let alone a documentary.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

It looked a bit like Sir Patrick Moore's The Sky at Night on the BBC.
The presenter had footage from the first launch of the OSO satellite, which he witnessed. The satellite in the studio looked like a model for a museum: one could see some of the instruments' electronics through transparent cover, which carried labels indicating who built the instrument. And some of the systems were actually working (for example, the satellite was rotating).
I was actually surprised when the self-pointing system of the satellite worked.

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papageno


"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)

"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)

"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)

Well, Star Trek, for one. American TV, with the exception of PBS and some cable channels, doesn't much broadcast documentaries at all.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Classic Trek on G4 and old sitcoms on the TV Channel or Nick-at-Nite were about the only ones I could think of. Oh, and the Game Show Network shows some really ancient game shows, some in black-and-white.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

I actually love those.

In the days before infomercials, there were a lot more examples, as evidenced by the enormous amount of I Love Lucy that I saw as a kid.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"