31–40 of 136 posts
> Collins, who remained in orbit on the Command Module, is behind the lens. Every other human is in front of it. This caption is so powerful.
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.
> "I was guided throughout by two principles: - be true to the photographs - be true to the Earth [...] The main changes I made were: [...] - adjusting the black point until the background of space appears truly black" These shots are beautiful, but is making the background completely black really doing reality justice? In our unfortunately light polluted night sky we can barely see the stars, but shouldn't the astro…
> "I was guided throughout by two principles: - be true to the photographs - be true to the Earth [...] The main changes I made were: [...] - adjusting the black point until the background of space appears truly black" These shots are beautiful, but is making the background completely black really doing reality justice? In our unfortunately light polluted night sky we can barely see the stars, but shouldn't the astro…
No, you have to be in the night side, or looking into the void (no Earth surface visible, definitely not the Sun in sight, not any part of your spacecraft being shined upon) for your eyes to adjust to the darkness and then you get to see the stars. Being near the Moon, I'd add "no moon surface" to that list.
> Or is the source material not showing stars due to a lack of exposure?
I'm not sure there... Film behaves differently than image sensors. Maybe if we had access to the negatives you could do some chemical magic to bring in detail. I don't know how hard/destructive that could be on the negatives, as film isn't a medium I've ever really used. Grew up in the 90's with a few film cameras, but digital took over before I had the chance to seriously get into photography and was also far cheaper (so, easier to pick up as a hobby for a teenager). Now I'm into digital image processing and that's a totally different beast on its own.
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 yo…
Essentially it relied on volcanic ash from specific locations, and they forensically traced those locations.
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…
You really need to take the power and "reality distortion effect" of propaganda during the Cold War into account. Massive projects were started without much rational sense just to beat the other side in an imaginary race (and a very concrete military race). What's the point of landing a man on the moon, if the technology to do so was so rushed and held together by duct tape that it wasn't useful for anything else? Wh…
And maybe that’s a problem! Why exactly are we not building beautiful landmarks that will survive eons like the Romans did?
We have a throwaway culture, and nobody ever dares question it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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…
You really need to take the power and "reality distortion effect" of propaganda during the Cold War into account. Massive projects were started without much rational sense just to beat the other side in an imaginary race (and a very concrete military race). What's the point of landing a man on the moon, if the technology to do so was so rushed and held together by duct tape that it wasn't useful for anything else? Wh…
Rather than nukes, I always thought the main advantage of the Shuttle was the ability to bring things back to Earth. Which it did, a few times:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-32
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-51-A
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-57
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-72
When then Shuttle was proposed, this was one of the main selling points. Having used it just 4 times over 133 missions... Well, that's not what was envisioned.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It’s all possible to do this, but the longer you wait to do it again, the more factors change and the more work it will be.
NIF exists to keep a team of nuclear bomb experts warm in case we need them. It isn’t to make a power plant or to make new bombs; it’s just there to keep the kettle warm.
Anecdote: I work at a physics project. When the PI asked for 200 million USD to build a new machine after 20 years they were awarded 3 millions USD to do an upgrade to the old machine. The funders are making sure that a team can still be assembled and get shit done under the PI’s leadership. If the upgrade goes on time and on budget then the new machine might be on the table.
The same thing is going on with many physics projects. Small prototypes get funded. “If you can make that and it works, then we’ll talk about the next step.” It’s slow, but it’s safe.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 yo…
It's essentially an old meme; the exact details had been lost, since the technology was not in continuous use and no written record survived, but the footnote on Wikipedia details its reconstruction. This great paper: https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/msa/ammin/article/98/10/166... Essentially it relied on volcanic ash from specific locations, and they forensically traced those locations.