This post originated from an RSS feed registered with .NET Buzz by Eric Gunnerson. Original Post: Apollo 11: Men on the Moon Feed Title: Eric Gunnerson's C# Compendium Feed URL: /msdnerror.htm?aspxerrorpath=/ericgu/Rss.aspx Feed Description: Eric comments on C#, programming and dotnet in general, and the aerodynamic characteristics of the red-nosed flying squirrel of the Lesser Antilles Latest .NET Buzz Posts Latest .NET Buzz Posts by Eric Gunnerson Latest Posts From Eric Gunnerson's C# Compendium

On July 20th, 1969, a 5-year-old boy living in Caldwell, Idaho stayed up past his bedtime to watch a very grainy television transmission of Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon, which cemented an interest in space that has lasted over the decades.

Since that time, I've watched coverage of countless space missions, but until I got access to NASA TV a couple of years ago, I only got what the networks wanted to show me (not that NASA TV is particularly good - you would get better production values from a high school AV class. NASA continues to make a huge mistake in not doing decent programming). Networks often miss the interesting stuff, and with the exception of a few specials, few people have seen the the archival footage that lurks in NASA's vaults.

Spacecraft films was founded to solve that problem. They have spent time going through tons of footage from the Apollo 11 mission, and have produced Apollo 11: Men on the Moon, a 3 DVD set with over 10 hours of content. I have yet to watch all the content, but they've taken a very innovative approach. For the launch, you can watch simultaneous views from 5 different tracking cameras, synchronized with the audio. For the touchdown, there is the single video taken from the LM, but with 4 different choices for audio. You can listen to CAPCOM talk to the astronauts, or you can listen to flight director Gene Kranz (author of the excellent Failure is not an option) as he talks to his flight controllers, as they work through computer problems during the landing, or you can listen to all of them at once in a 5.1DD mix (though the multichannel is marred by one very noisy channel). During Armstrong and Aldrin's moonwalk, they've overlaid the TV video with a one-per-second 16mm film, and the excellent 70mm still camera shots.

If you're a space buff, you need this set.