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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."
My father covered the launch for AP and he never said a word about it after he wrote the article about it.
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
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 ;)