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Posted by: ustrax Feb 26 2007, 04:40 PM

Sometime one can complain about TVs not giving enough attention to space exploration but here there's a channel (2:) who bets on great documentaries, tonight there's one about http://programas.rtp.pt/EPG/tv/epg-janela.php?p_id=21585&e_id=&c_id=8 from the Mercury project, after this, to let your mind travel a bit, two episodes from the Twilight Zone, only then I'll change to SIC to see a http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/mission_to_mars/about.php...

The question here is: What does your national TV do for space exploration?

Posted by: dilo Feb 26 2007, 10:09 PM

Dear Ustrax, the national italian television (called RAI), founded with public money, tipically does poor space/astronomy-related information and virtually no documentary about this. Also science fiction is almost censored, apart from some very bad commercial movies; this is true also for the major private network (Mediaset).
The only exception is a national private broadcast called "La7", which daily broadcast StarTrek series in the late afternoon and sometimes space related documentaries, like the one you watched (Ham, the chimp astronaut).
This makes me angry, especially because situation was very different 20/30 years ago: when I was a kid I grew up with UFO, Space1999 and many others great SF TV serials and I watched also many nice scientific documentaries. And, as you can imagine, the strongly conditioned my thinking.
At a certain point, they decided that this is a "niche target" and started to shift SF serials toward impossible hours (they were able to transmit new StarTrek seasons at 3/4 am!); then they stopped it definitively!
I'm not sure, but I cannot persuade myself that this is only a commercial choice based on share data... no, there must be more.
Something deeply subversive live in good Science Fiction and good Scientific journalism, and is probably related to the fact that, when you start to look above your head, you immediately understand how small we are and how insignificant are all the material things we (should) consider so important in our terrestrial life; and, also, you realize how ridicule are most TV shows we should watch. In other words, you become less conditionable and more free and, obviously, this is unacceptable by those who continuosly try to condition your mind and your choices through a mass media!
Maybe I'm becoming a crazy, hold man, but every day I'm more convinced of this. And I'm not the only one, at least in this Forum.
So I watch less and less TV and spend more time on the Internet!

Sad to say, but this is the epoch we live.

Posted by: tedstryk Feb 26 2007, 11:03 PM

Do we have national TV?...well, PBS, I guess. I have no idea about its coverage though.

Posted by: PDP8E Feb 27 2007, 01:02 AM

Here in Boston MA USA, we have a cable TV system that has 400+ channels.

From a space orientation it has the NASA Select Channel (24x7 Nasa, real-time missions, replays, press conferences, history of space, -etc). We have the Science channel (24x7 science topics and series: Cosmos, Ascent of Man, Space, everything). We have the SCIFI channel (24x7 new and old sci-fi series and movies), The Military Channel (24x7 of military themes and hardware), Discovery Channel (24x7 science themes), Discovery Wings channel (24x7 of aeronautics). We have about 20 Hi-DEF channels, and one carries a daily space update (it looks like they get the material from JPL, Space.com, and others.

None of these are what I call 'national tv' (public funded, state run, etc) They are all commercial enterprises (with the exception of the NASA channel). BUT most of these channels have national reach.

Our Publick TV is called PBS; it is govt-funded, and also has a host of space related themes (though maybe only 5-10%)

The mainstream 'network' channels are dreadful (sitcoms, and nutty dramas)

Am I happy? with 400 channels its is sometimes tough to put the remote down and go read the latest on UMSF (just kidding!)

Posted by: dvandorn Feb 27 2007, 02:48 AM

PBS does some very good documentaries on space themes. In fact, right at this very moment I am watching a PBS documentary in the "American Experience" series entitled "The Race to the Moon." It's an hour-long piece on the Apollo 8 mission, including a lot of very interesting recent interviews with Susan Borman, Marilyn Lovell and Valerie Anders. It features extremely good and accurate CGI animation of the various maneuvers, a very good preamble setting up the circumstances in which Apollo 8 flew, and some pretty rare footage (including onboard voice recorder tapes, some of the final TV transmission during TEI and snippets of Walter Cronkite's CBS coverage of the flight).

And while it happened coming up on 20 years ago, I remember PBS devoting more than six hours to "Neptune All Night," live coverage of the entire Voyager 2 close encounter with the Neptune system. I was *very* happy with my "national TV system" that night!

-the other Doug

Posted by: PhilCo126 Feb 27 2007, 05:15 PM

I'm happy to be able to see BBC1 + BBC2 + BBC World but would also like the other BBC channels

Posted by: dvandorn Feb 27 2007, 06:06 PM

The only version of the Beeb we get here in the States (well, at least the only one I get with my Comcast cable TV system) is what they call BBC-America, or BBCA. I have no real idea what programming from the various "mainline" BBC channels get combined into BBCA, though. I do enjoy listening to the BBC World News at least once a week -- IMHO, it's good to get some news from foreign viewpoints on a regular basis.

-the other Doug

Posted by: doctorclu Jun 15 2007, 08:05 PM

Just wanted to say I have ported my beta tapes of Nepture All Night (I got maybe four out of the 6.5 hours that show was aired) and currently putting up segments of the program on YouTube for all to enjoy.

To me Neptune All Night was the moon landing of my time. I wouldn't experience excitement like that till the Titan lander, and I will be at the edge of my seat in 2015 with Pluto!!

Posted by: volcanopele Jun 15 2007, 08:53 PM

Very Cool!

I would most like to see the coverage from when the Triton images started coming down. Would be curious to see everyone's initial reaction.

Posted by: Ian R Jun 15 2007, 09:50 PM

I have some of that footage Jason (from the 1989 BBC Horizon documentary on the Neptune encounter). Among those visible are Carolyn Porco, Ed Stone, Carl Sagan, Torrence Johnson, Brad Smith and many others too.

Ian.

Posted by: volcanopele Jun 20 2007, 08:16 PM

doctorclu, thanks for uploading the other videos. Really interesting to watch. I haven't gotten to the part covering the return of the Triton images, but I am really am looking forward to it.

Posted by: volcanopele Jun 20 2007, 08:57 PM

I particularly like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RiHYaIe4DI

This particularly clip has Steve Wall and Larry Soderblom discussing Triton and its surface features shortly before the highest resolution images were returned. Many of the arguments regarding what various surface markings mean sounds an awful lot like the arguments we have with Titan (involving many of the same people...)

Posted by: ustrax Aug 27 2007, 09:46 AM

My national TV doesn't make me happy...it makes my laugh histerically...
Check out this precious gems of translation...read the original captions and try to figure out who are the famous scientists that gave their names to that fantastic mission to Titan.

BTW, vacations were just great!

Posted by: ugordan Aug 27 2007, 09:55 AM

How in the world did I miss this thread? This is awesome stuff, thanks a lot, doctorclu! At last I can get a feel of what it was like back in 1989 watching the flyby unfold!

Posted by: tty Aug 27 2007, 10:12 AM

You're nitpicking Ustrax. If I remember rightly O'Higgins was a chilean liberation leader and Cousin a french philosopher, both in the early nineteenth century surely that is close enough to Cassini and Huygens for the average journalist?

Posted by: nprev Aug 27 2007, 02:41 PM

Thanks so much for posting this footage on YouTube, DoctorClu...never even knew about "Neptune All Night"! I was working two jobs in 1989, had to wait an eternity for the magazines to post pics...

PBS definitely did the Voyagers right, though; shouldn't be surprised. On 12 Nov 1980, my high-school physics teacher & I sat in a pizza parlor that had a projection big-screen TV & watched V1's Saturn encounter while killing a couple of pitchers...we figured we'd had enough beer once we saw the first images of the F-ring...

Posted by: deglr6328 Aug 27 2007, 11:38 PM

DoctorClu is to be worshipped for his youtube efforts! These things are part of history and the chances of PBS ever re-airing or even just selling them on tape is exactly ZERO (too busy with Deepak Chopra woo-woo nonsense marathons during pledge drives these days).

I guess I'm fairly happy with PBS's stuff. NOVA used to be sooo much better back in the 80's though; no endless sequences of useless do-daa computer graphics that convey no useful ideas or concepts to the viewer, just information packed science reporting! I would LOVE to watch the show from 1979 called "The End Of The Rainbow" on nuclear fusion power again. Sadly virtually all shows from the 80's are long gone, not for sale anywhere and not even to be found in libraries at all anymore.

Posted by: Ian R Aug 28 2007, 07:04 PM

Here's my collection of various NASA videos and animations, which I have collated from a variety of different sources:

Pioneer 11 Encounter with Saturn in 1979.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8251741681125759931&hl=en

Voyager 1 Flyby of Jupiter in 1979.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-870102537039645219&hl=en

Voyager 1 Flyby of Saturn in 1980.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5431829575440408089&hl=en

Voyager 2 Encounter with Jupiter in 1979.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1825648771198195435&hl=en

Voyager 2 Flyby of Saturn in 1981.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1227429927988387981&hl=en

Voyager 2 Flyby of Uranus in 1986.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1763739161440972214&hl=en

Voyager 2 Encounter with Neptune in 1989.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8746701663054744154&hl=en

Ice Volcanoes on Triton, as imaged by Voyager 2 in 1989.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2361275885502809184&hl=en

Galileo Orbital Tour of Jupiter and its Moons.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8338731008835543738&hl=en

I think the Jim Blinn animations are truly brilliant, despite the dated graphics. Modern computer visualisations (such as those for the Cassini mission) are prettier, but far less dynamic.

Ian.

Posted by: Ian R Aug 28 2007, 09:19 PM

Tectonic Activity on Neptune's Moon Triton

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yy2iscggebI

Posted by: Ian R Sep 14 2010, 04:40 PM

I've posted some (hopefully) higher quality versions of the Voyager and Pioneer animations to YouTube:

Pioneer 11 Flyby Animation - Saturn and Titan (1979)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Qj9jMkbwrY

Voyager 1 flyby Animation - Saturn and Moons (1980)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd9TOvFelFg

Voyager 2 Flyby of Saturn (1981) Official NASA Animation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQk7AFe13CY

Voyager 2 Flyby of Uranus (1986) Official NASA animations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrKQaDupdWQ

Voyager 2 flyby Animation - Neptune and Triton (1989)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdBOZWB3iAI

Voyager 2 flyby Animation - Neptune and Triton (1989) - REDUX
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynUihD47ajo

Highlights of Voyager 2 flyby of Neptune and Triton (1989)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWzEI4gacZc

Posted by: elakdawalla Sep 14 2010, 05:04 PM

Awesome, Ian. I don't suppose you have one for Voyager 1's encounter with Jupiter? I am looking for one for a post this afternoon. If you don't have it, I'll just drop in your Jupiter rotation animation from Voyager 1, which will give us a nice "before modern processing" look to compare with Bjorn's http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=6705&view=findpost&p=164067

Posted by: Ian R Sep 14 2010, 05:21 PM

Emily,

Here's an old one I cobbled together from various sources, and then uploaded to the (often forgotten) Google Video site:

Voyager 1 Flyby of Jupiter in 1979
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-870102537039645219#

If that's not really good enough for your purposes, then please feel free to use any of the other videos I posted earlier!

Posted by: elakdawalla Sep 14 2010, 05:34 PM

Perfectly retro, thanks! Your new versions are great resources, but I'm glad we still have the original visualizations that people saw in the '70s available also.

(Your first link was malformed but I was able to track it down on Google Video & fixed the link in your post)

Posted by: Ian R Sep 14 2010, 05:43 PM

Whoops- thanks for fixing the link!

I should also mention that if you want an example of "before modern processing", then you may want to use this archive video instead:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BosvP4CLz9o

Here's an excerpt from the most up-to-date iteration of my version of the same approach movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylesfYhbwPY

Posted by: hendric Sep 14 2010, 06:48 PM

Ian,
Wow, it's like a whole new probe is on it's way to Jupiter. Can't wait to see the finished product.

Edit: Have you just done frames without the moons so far?

Posted by: eoincampbell Sep 15 2010, 02:34 AM

This is absolutely classic stuff... Thanks Ian, for producing and sharing!

Posted by: 4th rock from the sun Sep 15 2010, 10:58 AM

Great stuff!

Posted by: Ian R Oct 18 2010, 01:59 AM

Hi Richard,

I've just uploaded the latest version of the approach movie to YouTube:

Voyager 1 Jupiter Approach Movie - October 2010 Draft
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7imqLyR_u6s&fmt=22

This covers a period of 95 hours, and features appearances from Ganymede, Europa and Io (twice!), in addition to the shadows of all three moons. Due to the way I've processed this movie, the moons appear to 'disappear' once they move away from Jupiter, but I shall be attempting to fix that in the next iteration of the sequence...