STS-129 Ascent Video Highlights from mike interbartolo on Vimeo.
If this video doesn’t leave you in awe I suggest you check your pulse.
As a photographer, occasional videographer, and a technology professional, I’m awed on many levels.
Visually this is stunning, as it captures many viewpoints that I, as an observer would want to see as the proverbial “fly on the wall”… it is often these unusual perspectives and wide-angle lenses that produce the most dramatic images. My hat is off to the team who produced this masterpiece as it not only answers questions (without a single word!) of HOW so many of the mechanics of shuttle launches work, but does so in an phenomenally artistic way. As a child I watched Apollo missions on TV and the limitation of shape defined the images sent back to earth. Here, the Shuttle’s odd shape abets the use of angles that the Saturn rockets could never provide, and we benefit by being able to see in vivid detail the launch mechanics, the flight path, the release and return of the jettisoned bits**, and of course our beautiful home world spiraling away beneath.
This is so much better than the illustrations and animations I saw as a child. **As a kid I always wanted to see the perspective of the Saturn rocket booster stages watching the vehicle flying away (rather than vise-versa) and following it’s view as it tumbled back into the atmosphere and theoretically, the ocean. Now I can watch what I’ve always wanted to watch.
Finally as a technology professional I am reminded that there are people way smarter than I, who have dedicated their lives to the progress of our species. Taking scientific theory and cutting edge technologies, putting them to practical use in the exploration of the universe beyond our little blue planet. I’m privileged to have met and count among my friends people who do this sort of thing, and it makes me proud to be a human being. While this short film is but a drop in the vast ocean of knowledge on the subject, it serves to remind us earthbound many, of the efforts of the sky-gazing few. Keep up the good work folks.
Well, what I can view of it, looks pretty good.
It locks up my computer such that eventually my old, wheezy laptop just shuts down. On my iMac-enstein, it’s no faster.
Oh well….I’ll keep trying!
As for your words re: the WAY smarter folks who do this type of cool chit, we’re privileged to have Larry Wade, on the J-L list, as one of them AND ‘us!’ Though I will mourn the end of the STS missions, it’s high time we moved on to things that contemporaneously matter to this country. space missions are cool, neat, and nifty, but in these times, I think are increasingly unjustified.