171–180 of 221 posts
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that's a great point about the lighting... it really does contribute to that distinctive look. i've also read that the lack of atmosphere on the moon sharpens the shadows and increases the contrast, which probably adds to that effect.
The moon has a very thin atmosphere, or at least so the mission science reporters said.
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> - ...KSP did a really good job mimicking the real thing The pic with the shadow of the lander is really close to what you get out of KSP when you first land on Mun or Minmus. Really really cool. Congrats to everyone who made this happen!
Interesting how Luna has more of a Minmus feel in terms of scale, the horizon is so close. Something to do with the wide angle lens I imagine?
In 3-5 years, once Starship is running continuously, expect a flurry of these types of unique "small" missions.
The future of spaceflight is so exciting.
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Here's what Apollo used: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_photography Here's what Firefly uses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_photography Hopefully you can see that from a raw tech level, there's practically no overlap between those things at all. The technology has moved on _completely_.
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I'm familiar with the Mariner camera. It's pretty fascinating. There obviously no way to return film from a Mars flyby, so they had to take a digital approach. But the technology was so crude in 1965 that they literally had to paint the "digital" images by hand in order to get a visual output. It's a fascinating story.
https://science.nasa.gov/resource/first-tv-image-of-mars-han...
Suffice it to say that this technique has essentially no relation to today's digital cameras, apart from using electrons or something. The Apollo missions did not use digital cameras; they used film, which could produce superb high-resolution images, provided you could return it to Earth.
You can actually learn things in this forum, if you listen to people who know what they're talking about.
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It's fascinating how the pictures have that "Apollo moon landing" look. I'd always assumed that a huge part of this was just 1960s technology (film not digital etc), but apparently it's actually coming from the literally unearthly lighting conditions of being on the Moon.
a lot of "unearthly lighting" is because of regolith' contra-reflexivity it reflects light in (roughly) the direction of light source so you have /even bigger/ contrast between shadow and its border than you'd expect from "no air to soften shadows with dispersed light"
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_orbital_launch_systems Smallest lunar lander so far is 200kg/440lbs, that's the weight of a carry on full of lead. Besides the Space Shuttle can't go higher or deliver higher than LEO anyway.
That's not an answer as we're looking for choices available from "the 70s" to before SpaceX so let's say around 2000. This issue is literally why SpaceX was started. Elon looked into NASA's plans for sending humans to Mars, saw they didn't exist and wanted to get the public more excited in space. His idea was to use his money to fund the launch of a greenhouse to Mars, which would be live streamed. No company in Amer…
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If you’re going to post albums of high-res photographs on the internet… why not Flickr?
It's a valid question about ToS, and one I'm not sure of.
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Excuse me? I'm familiar with the Mariner camera. It's pretty fascinating. There obviously no way to return film from a Mars flyby, so they had to take a digital approach. But the technology was so crude in 1965 that they literally had to paint the "digital" images by hand in order to get a visual output. It's a fascinating story. https://science.nasa.gov/resource/first-tv-image-of-mars-han... Suffice it to say that t…
Just saying it uses digital photography doesn't give me any clue. Is the tech bleeding edge or 20 years old?
My initial argument was that it takes time to add new tech to space flight, due to radiation concerns. Your argument is that they use digital tech now. Which doesn't disprove my point, nor does it point out any mistakes I made.
Here are the pictures it has taken so far: https://www.flickr.com/photos/fireflyspace/albums/7217772031... There's also a cool lunar flyover video taken during final deorbit.
It's fascinating how the pictures have that "Apollo moon landing" look. I'd always assumed that a huge part of this was just 1960s technology (film not digital etc), but apparently it's actually coming from the literally unearthly lighting conditions of being on the Moon.