50 Years of NASA’s Home Movies

And in hi-def no less...

See topic TV alert.

(I think this topic here is probably the best place to carry on discussion of the series over the weeks.)

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For whatever reasons, Comcast in my area already has Part 2 available for free On Demand viewing. I watched it yesterday and it was visually good but skimpy on some details in the narration; e.g. the Gemini 8 crisis is mentioned almost in passing.

Still, there was some footage that I had never seen such as film shot by Borman and Lovell on Gemini 7 of a submarine-based Trident or Polaris launch. Very interesting to watch the arc move up and towards G7 (it was planned). And some decent albeit breif interveiws with Gene Lunney, John Young, Gene Cernan, Buzz Aldrin, Chris Kraft and Eugene Kranz, among others.

I'm watching this, and so far it's pretty amazing. The original footage is breathtaking. Getting to see the first EVA and the Gemini 6 and 7 capsules flying in formation together is just amazing.

They kept saying that if the astronaut suit rips (or has a leak) during an EVA in the vacuum of space, that it would be immediately fatal. I thought that the "immediacy" has been established to not be so immediate, under such a condition (science discussions from other space movies). Granted, that such a condition would certainly be cause for great concern, but is the "immediate death" bit really accurate?

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Well, considering you can only live about a minute maximum, and that they couldn't get them back in the capsule and re-pressurized that fast "immediate" is pretty close.

I thought it was pretty awesome. How I wish we were going somewhere today instead of just mucking about in low Earth orbit with the space truck (shuttle).

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I believe the specific wording they used was as follows:

"If there is a failure in the suit, it will kill him instantly."

I dunno, it just doesn't sound "right" to me. Taking into account your scenario, I could accept if they worded it to the effect that it would be "certain death". "Kill him instantly" still seems to imply something other than that. So now I am curious if they really mean that something happens "instantly", rather than just "very soon after" since the logistics involved preclude getting him into a safe environment in time.

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Dude, don't be a Quaid!

It's not, but it is dramatic, and they probably didn't want to explain the details. How quickly they would die would depend on the type and extent of the problem. If someone is fully exposed to vacuum, but is otherwise undamaged, they could have 10 or so seconds of consciousness, and could be alive for several minutes. If they aren't fully exposed to vacuum, they might have longer. If they are badly hurt in whatever accident caused the problem, it could be shorter.

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Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

The first two hours (for some reason presented as two separate shows where the first hour of the two hour show repeated the content of the hour show) were so full of mistakes, it was incredible.

For instance, in the sequence where launch disasters were being shown, a Saturn launch was featured. There were no Saturn launch disasters. They all launched successfully.

And the Mercury retrorockets weren't required to be pointed "down" as the narration claimed, but toward the orbital path, i.e., the retros would be leading, not trailing. And not "perfectly" either. You can always tell when the writer is not a scientist/engineer when such words start getting bandied about.

More blunders (with illustrations) later.

Doesn't anyone ever do a technical review of these things before they're released for broadcast?

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I thought it was "ok". The pictures were nice, and it was nice to see all the interviews with people. But, as Mak said, there were a lot of mistakes. And I felt they kind of rushed through things - the entire Mercury program in one hour. It gave the TV program kind of a choppy feeling.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

When they were talking about the number of Titan missile failures, they showed two Titan I missiles blowing up. Gemini used Titan IIs. Those were completely different missiles (engines, propellants, etc). The Titan I had a success rate of under 76% (17 failures out of 70 attempts). The Titan II did have several failures in 1963 but overall, the success rate was over 93% (7 failures out of 106 launches).

The video footage was very good. I would've liked to see them give more coverage to Gordon Cooper's Mercury mission. There were several failed systems by the time he reentered that it took some pretty good piloting on his part to come home safely.

On the nineteenth orbit, the first sign of trouble appeared when the spacecraft 0.05 g (0.5 m/s²) light came on. However, this turned out to be a faulty indicator, and the spacecraft was not reentering. On the 20th orbit, Cooper lost all attitude readings. The 21st orbit saw a short-circuit occur in the bus bar serving the 250 volt main inverter. This left the automatic stabilization and control system without electric power.

On the 21st orbit, John Glenn onboard the Coastal Sentry Quebec near Kyūshū, Japan, helped Cooper prepare a revised checklist for retrofire. Due to the system malfunctions, many of the steps would have to be done manually. Only Hawaii and Zanzibar were in radio range on this last orbit, but communications were good. Cooper noted that the carbon dioxide level was rising in the cabin and in his spacesuit. He told Carpenter as he passed over Zanzibar, "Things are beginning to stack up a little." Throughout the problems, Cooper remained cool, calm and collected.

At the end of the 21st orbit, Cooper again contacted Glenn on the Coastal Sentry Quebec. He reported the spacecraft was in retro attitude and holding manually. The checklist was complete. Glenn gave a ten-second countdown to retrofire. Cooper kept the spacecraft aligned at a 34 degree pitchdown angle and manually fired the retrorockets on "Mark!".

Fifteen minutes later the Faith 7 landed just four miles (6 km) from the prime recovery ship, the carrier USS Kearsarge. This was the most accurate landing to date, despite the lack of automatic controls.

I had to turn in about 10 minutes into the second hour. Getting up at 5:00 AM does cramp my viewing a bit.

I thought the show was just ok. Lots of stuff that wasn't quite right, as Maksutov points out, lots of little clips of things that weren't relevant to what they were talking about, contrived cliffhangers ahead of each commercial break. But some of the interviews were interesting (but much too short and broken up) and it was fun seeing the events I remember from childhood.

There was much too little about the Soviet space program, as well.

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Since the subtitle of the series is "The NASA Missions" I suspect we won't hear much detail about Soviet efforts. That said, I hope the series provides background on the Apollo-Soyuz mission during the fourth episode.

This is looking like the TV version of a weakly-written "coffee table" book. Lots of big animal pictures but not too deep.

I don't like the collage format of the magazine ads they did for this. Too chaotic looking.

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"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

I haven't seen the ads, but it sounds like they describe the show pretty well.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

I didn't watch the first episode, but I'm disappointed that the NY Times article linked in the OP doesn't mention anything about mistakes. Aren't journalists supposed to do that, rather than just act like PR agents?

Gee, did no one like it?

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

That assumes the journalist could spot the mistakes in the first place. IMO if the writer knew there were errors s/he probably would have mentioned it and most of the errors are somewhat subtle; e.g. you'd have to know that the failed rocket launches were something other than the Saturn V. That does not excuse good journalistic scholarship but then again, it'd be tough to verify every statement in the show.

Jason, I liked the first two episodes because I saw footage I had never seen before (or had long ago forgotten), such as the sinking of Liberty Bell 7, Grissom almost drowning and the rather distraught look on his face when he's on the phone on the aircraft carrier, still in his pressure suit, trying to explain to somebody on the other end what the heck just happened.

I just would have liked it more if the producers strove for better accuracy in the narration and did a tighter job of linking the narration to what was being shown in the film at any given moment.

I thought most of it was interesting, as well. That is apart from there seeming to be a lot of factual errors. I guess it can give off an estranged impression given the program content is about NASA and its space program. One only anticipates that the production would take on a similar attention to quality and accuracy.

The drama of getting the job done with only a hair's width margin between success and disaster does come across, imo. I am also amazed when an impromptu "situation" arrives where literally nobody on the ground can save you, and one man has to think on his feet and take action to save it all from disaster. That's some hair-raising stuff! Stuff like that really nails the message of the extreme caliber that these men were made of.

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Dude, don't be a Quaid!

Don't get me wrong, I like muticolored collages, but not for space exploration. Single, powerful images seem to work best for it in my mind.

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"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song