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Dying Man Shares Unseen Challenger Video
longacre writes "An amateur video of the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger explosion has been made public for the first time. The Florida man who filmed it from his front yard on his new Betamax camcorder turned the tape over to an educational organization a week before he died this past December. The Space Exploration Archive has since published the video into the public domain in time for the 24th anniversary of the catastrophe. Despite being shot from about 70 miles from Cape Canaveral, the shuttle and the explosion can be seen quite clearly. It is unclear why he never shared the footage with NASA or the media. NASA officials say they were not aware of the video, but are interested in examining it now that it has been made available."
if they'd known about it.
Sorry.
Why would someone keep this private and/or secret for so long?
Houston, they've got trouble of some kind...
I find it very hard to believe that a 25-year-old degraded video shot from 70 miles away on a consumer Betamax camcorder would be of any use to NASA in their actual analysis of the accident. There were probably a lot of people taping it or taking pictures that never bothered to turn them over to NASA, just because it never occurred to them that their crappy video would be of any real help in understanding what happened.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
http://nycaviation.com.nyud.net:8090/2010/01/31/previously-unseen-amateur-video-of-space-shuttle-challenger-disaster/
Because they can't get 7 up.
That's trouble of some kind, George.
If I were lucky enough to film anything amazing, I wouldn't share it with any big entities either.. It's MINE !
they herded us into the library of my elementary school to watch the launch. I must have been in 3rd grade or so.
The teachers hurriedly ushered us back into class when the "space ship" was "done". Most of us came away thinking a shuttle launch was supposed to look like that.
THL phish sticks
A sad understatement in retrospect, RIP Challengers.
How could they? They violated his copyright and took away any incentive for the man to make another movie.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
... that betamax did not just have great audio and video, *it can survive years in the attic* without losing much of the quality.
I would think the man being dead and all would have damped his enthusiasm anyway.
It was weird that there were so many tasteless Challenger jokes. Anyone know if this was common all over the country or was it only my neck of the woods?
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
On the original article:
http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20100129/NEWS02/1290397/
Even distant observations might still be useful if it was shot at a different angle than other observations of the event, and as it's in the sky, and you're 70 miles away, it's a different angle.
The problem with video is that it's not as useful for judging the speed of things coming towards you, or away from you, unless it's of a fixed size, it's not tumbling, and you have sufficient resolution. If this had a different plane of the sky as the other 'official' footage, it could be used to test any 3d models that might've been made of the disaster, and if it disproves them, provide input for a new model to be made.
Disclaimer -- I work at a NASA center as a contractor, but I have absolutely nothing to do with the shuttle program.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
can't say the same thing for your DVD/BluRay+-R discs in 25 years
http://hotairpundit.blogspot.com/2010/02/new-video-of-challenger-explosion.html
Florida isn't retarded... Alachua County, maybe.
No, Florida is retarded. We voted for Bush twice and Obama once.
Does anyone know why people post things like this? Is there steganography involved here?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
This isn't speculation - it's an argument.
Can't wait to get the next one: "dying man releases in public domain previously unseen footage of the plane crashing into the Pentagon".
+5 fuck yes.
Seventy miles is not that great a distance for viewing space launches. I remember watching from Satellite Beach (about 40 miles from Cape Kennedy) as Apollo 11 lifted off for the Moon. We could easily see the Saturn booster, and the roar of the engines was LOUD, even that far away. My mother took Super 8 footage of the launch, and, even with the very modest zoom factor, the rocket and payload capsule are quite clearly visible for the first 40 seconds or so.
Check out my novel.
I was at work, and I was the first one to make a comment.
Still in a stunned state I said, "Oh no, not again... We're really screwed now..."
My coworkers couldn't understand that statement, but then, they were neither very smart, nor were they well informed about NASA history.
On the other hand, I've been trying to keep up with the space program since I was a toddler, the oldest memory I can recall is the the first moon landing.
I was aware of the other disasters, even the ones from before I was born.
Additionally, I had an understanding of the repercussions of the event.
Short version, yep, we were seriously screwed by that.
Something a lot of people don't understand.
We go there because we haven't been there.
We do it because it hasn't been done before.
We don't know what new things we will learn.
We are enriched by exploration in ways we can not predict.
If we cease to explore an important part of us curls up and dies
We have been greatly enriched by such exploration in ways we can barely comprehend
Why do the ignorant or unthinking want to deny such wonders and enrichment to our children and grandchildren
I was a senior in high school when it happened. I was the first person in my high school to know.
Because I snuck out of shop class and went next door to the laundromat to play Pac Man. I was bored and I wanted a Coke and a game. And a TV was on. I remember thinking "Oh cool - a shuttle launch. That'll be fun to watch, should kill some time".
I went back to school, told my shop teacher what I saw. And oddly enough didn't get in any trouble over it.
I too always wind up in prime spots to watch disasters. I was writing software for a consumer IrDA controller (think universal remote) when 9/11 happened. I was the only person in the building with a TV, which I had for test purposes. We rigged it up with a coathanger and watched local broadcasts. I had to sit there and watch the whole ugly thing, all damn day long. Talk about lousy luck. I'm the only guy in the building with a TV on that day.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Dr. Jack Moss' son is my eye doctor. From what I understand, Dr. Moss thought that his recording of the catastrophe was only of any value to himself and possibly his family, as testimony that they had witness the event first hand. He believed, especially with all the media coverage, that he had nothing of scientific value to offer NASA. Like a lot of things, with time we often forget we have them ;)
He probably could have made serious $$ with this tape, but didn't. Hopefully it was out of respect for the Challenger crew. If so, I applaud this person as a man of ethics.
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
You Americans are rather melodramatic about this entire event...have you every tried to consider why?
I mean, 7 people died after taking a risk in which they knew death was a possibility. 7. Only 7.
And yet somehow this excites the same type of feverish outpouring of grief that is reserved for religious martyrs.
And why are you so ready to label anyone who dies in the course of their normal daily work as 'heroes'?
What did they accomplish that was so heroic?
Not trolling BTW, just genuinely interested in your national mindset.
To paraphrase xkcd:
Movies: "Look, you can clearly see the O-ring giving way there!"
Reality: "We can continue blowing this up and interpolating pixels, but anything we saw would be just our imagination."
Correct. And on the video, you can see an abnormal plume, even from 70 miles away, and the moment of tank explosion. The forensics guys will look at it with interest. It may not tell them much they don't already know, but they'll look.
Disclaimer -- I used to work at a NASA center as a contractor, on Shuttle and Station programs.
>You Americans are rather melodramatic about this entire event...have you every tried to consider why?
Because space exploration is fucking awesome, represents the height of human achievement, and the timeless urge of mankind to explore.
These people died doing something amazing, and thus they too were amazing.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Sharing stuff with news organizations in 1986 wasn't like it is today. Noawadays you can send stuff to news agencies via the web, email, Twitter, etc. and the network's usage rights are implied to be given by the mere use of their submission mechanism. However, back then they would have had to specially negotiate usage rights, exclusivity, compensation (yes you typically would actually get paid for submitting stuff), etc. They might even want the guy to prove he actually shot the thing. He'd definitely have forms to sign and would have to bring in the tape, and it would all have be done without the benefit of email or fax, too.
So perhaps it was simply too difficult to work all this out logistically, or maybe the guy wanted more money, or just simply didn't want to go through with all the rigamarole... I wouldn't blame him if it were any of these.
...that went through Christa McAuliffe's mind?
A chunk of metal *this* big.
Would you admit publicly that you spent your money on the losing format in the video war? It would have been bad enough if it were a VCR, but no, it was a camcorder, which cost much more.
Yes, I just decoded it:
"All your Shuttles are belong to us"
But what does it mean?
Are you deaf George?
They died in the pursuit of bettering mankind, UNLIKE religious martyrs, who die in the name of a belief system that celebrates fictional beings.
If anything, you should be questioning why ANYONE who get's martyred religiously should be celebrated, considering how belief in some mythical being is absurd.
McAuliffe's last words to her husband before launch:
You feed the dog, I'll feed the fish
After winning the latest format war, Sony thinks it wields enough powers now to rewrite history and attempts to retroactively win the last one.
"Betamax offers crystal clear video quality even after 24 years!"
There is something peculiarly peaceful about this footage. The TV broadcast footage is somehow a bit too intimate in regards to their deaths, too mechanical and focusing on the gruesomeness.
This video shows a quiet, sad failure, with smoke clouds peacefully crossing a couple of times. It's zen like.
I was working at Rocketdyne on the Shuttle Main Engines at the time.
When the Challenger exploded we were told over the intercom that a "System Malfunction" happened on flight 51 and the phones went down. It was not until people went out for lunch that they found out really what happened. In the mean time guards came in and confiscated all the engine build log books to prevent someone from going in and "fixing" some data with the sudden realization of a serious error.
Spent the next year helping to prepare a giant report at the request of Richard Feynman.
"They were carrying humanity's banner into space."
True, nicely said. But it was even worse than that. This one was special.
It was the first time a truly lay person was going up in the shuttle, a very happy-go-lucky normal seeming teacher, Christine McAuliffe, so the media was particularly focused on it, as were most Americans. There were TV specials all about how her class of 3rd graders or whatever they were were going to join up in the school auditorium and watch it on TV. The human interest angle on all this was very high.
I used to work the overnight shift at my job, and I remember purposely going straight home from work and turning on the TV immediately to watch the launch. Bleaty-eyed from overnight work on a bright sunny morning both where I lived and where the shuttle was rising, I watched with the usual fascination, and when I saw it explode right in front of my eyes...
It still shakes me. It sucked, it was terrible. A nation's hopes rose with that shuttle, and were temporarily slammed back to earth.
That shuttle launch was special. That's why people still get mawkish about it.
No it isn't.
mod me funny
Well, they were more amazing than you.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
To say, "they were just doing a job" puts walking on the moon on the same relative plane as digging a ditch.
How does one become so jaded? Does it take a long time?
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.