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Earth Restored – 50 restored images of earth released

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Re: Earth Restored – 50 restored images of earth released

#21

Post by ernopp »

timdaub wrote: post #16

I always wonder what happens to you psychologically when you see something like this. As one of the astronauts I mean. Surely, once you've returned, nothing will be as it used to.

I love this quote from Edgar Mitchell (Apollo 14) on seeing Earth from the Moon:

You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, "Look at that, you son of a bitch."

Re: Earth Restored – 50 restored images of earth released

#22

Post by ernopp »

Leszek wrote: post #17
timdaub wrote: post #16

I always wonder what happens to you psychologically when you see something like this. As one of the astronauts I mean. Surely, once you've returned, nothing will be as it used to.

It's called the "overview effect": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect

I wonder how we could get more people to experience this effect... Something like what Stewart Brand did by pushing for and publicising the first whole earth picture (in part via the Whole Earth Catalog) but more for the internet age.

I was toying with an idea of a site called "Get Some Perspective" where you'd start off with a FPS view and as you scroll you gradually zoom out, eventually to the whole observable universe. You could send this link to people if they're being short-sighted, callous, etc and hopefully instill a bit of the Overview effect in them...

Re: Earth Restored – 50 restored images of earth released

#24

Post by st_goliath »

In case you are interested in more photographs from the Apollo missions, back in 2015, NASA released a whole digitized archive:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive/albums

The link is from a hand full at the bottom of the article, where it also lists other archive overview pages and leads to ~15k scanned photos.

Re: Earth Restored – 50 restored images of earth released

#25

Post by pbronez »

hyko wrote: post #20
vegetablepotpie wrote: post #6

It's hard to believe that it's been over 50 years since humans have been outside of low earth orbit. It's like we sprinted forward so fast, going from horse drawn carriage to space flight in a generation, only to get frightened and recede back from the highest point, never to go back. Granted there has been an enormous amount of innovation in the last 50 years, but by some accounts we've been going backwards. Humans…

Technology has not regressed since the 1970s though. We have the latent capability to go any time we want, it’s just very expensive and there’s no point.

Still planning to do it again within the next decade just to reassure ourselves about it.

Re: Earth Restored – 50 restored images of earth released

#26

Post by himinlomax »

vegetablepotpie wrote: post #6

It's hard to believe that it's been over 50 years since humans have been outside of low earth orbit. It's like we sprinted forward so fast, going from horse drawn carriage to space flight in a generation, only to get frightened and recede back from the highest point, never to go back. Granted there has been an enormous amount of innovation in the last 50 years, but by some accounts we've been going backwards. Humans…

People have been hiking to the top of mount Everest for a while now, but you still can't ask an Uber to take you there.

Because there isn't much worthwhile to do there, the interesting thing is going there, not being there. At the moment. When/if it can be done for cheap and on the regular, there might be stuff to do.

Re: Earth Restored – 50 restored images of earth released

#28

Post by pjc50 »

vegetablepotpie wrote: post #6

It's hard to believe that it's been over 50 years since humans have been outside of low earth orbit. It's like we sprinted forward so fast, going from horse drawn carriage to space flight in a generation, only to get frightened and recede back from the highest point, never to go back. Granted there has been an enormous amount of innovation in the last 50 years, but by some accounts we've been going backwards. Humans…

Humans are capable of Mach 3 flight. It's just a "latent" capability. Something we could do but is not currently cost-effective.

> The technology that produced those pictures are gone, we might be able to take ones like them again, but never with the same rockets and never with the same photo-chemical processes.

You can never step in the same river twice, and we are all mortal. This is just a statement about the passage of time.

> Progress is fragile, not inevitable and everything we have can be lost in a generation just as easily as it was made.

This, on the other hand, is important, and why it's important not to let people wreck it by lying about everything.

Worth questioning the "whig view of history" backwards as well; a lot of what we call progress had very large costs for certain groups of people at the time and made their lives worse. Or got them killed.

Re: Earth Restored – 50 restored images of earth released

#29

Post by astroflask »

vegetablepotpie wrote: post #6

It's hard to believe that it's been over 50 years since humans have been outside of low earth orbit. It's like we sprinted forward so fast, going from horse drawn carriage to space flight in a generation, only to get frightened and recede back from the highest point, never to go back. Granted there has been an enormous amount of innovation in the last 50 years, but by some accounts we've been going backwards. Humans…

Okay, I came here to talk about how the images are a bit soft and a quick, subtle pass of Richardson-Lucy deconvolution restores some detail (and enhances the film grain, that's a plus for me but some people may find it a bit too much -- it is still there in the pictures though).

And then I read your comment and you totally throw me into a Wikipedia rabbit hole with the Roman concrete... Speaking of which, what do you mean we can't make Roman concrete nowadays? Wikipedia even says that there are corporations and municipalities looking into it as a viable, environmental-friendly, long-lasting alternative to regular concrete[0] !

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete#Modern_use

Re: Earth Restored – 50 restored images of earth released

#30

Post by tomnipotent »

vegetablepotpie wrote: post #6

It's hard to believe that it's been over 50 years since humans have been outside of low earth orbit. It's like we sprinted forward so fast, going from horse drawn carriage to space flight in a generation, only to get frightened and recede back from the highest point, never to go back. Granted there has been an enormous amount of innovation in the last 50 years, but by some accounts we've been going backwards. Humans…

> Humans are no longer capable of mach 3 flight, or making Roman concrete

We have plenty of aircraft capable of mach 3 or faster just not for commercial purposes, and most modern concrete is superior to Roman concrete in most dimensions specifically cost (not to mention its modern mythos is completely based on a single study published in American Mineralogist).

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