Earthrise
Some years ago, Kevin Kelly published a book entitled The Home Planet.
It was a collection of some of the most astonishing photographs from space I have ever seen.
I still have it.
What made the book particularly interesting (I interviewed Kelly when I was at CBS News) is that he got all the photos for free from NASA.
They were (and are) in the public domain.
That is, they had been paid for by our tax dollars and so belonged to the public.
There were (and are) millions of them.
(Often shot with Hasselblads on 6×6 so quite good).
What Kelly did was organize them and thus create a wonderful book.
Yesterday, I came across this video from NASA.
It’s a collection of shots of the Shuttle lifting off.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2VygftZSCs&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]As you can see, NASA makes great engineers, but TV producers they are not.
And I am sure this is only the tip of the iceberg – the very tip.
I am sure there are thousands and thousands of hours of absolutely spectacular NASA film and HD video available, also in the public domain.
Look at some of these shots. They were made with the best equipment available at the time. And look at the access! Do you wanna go stand under that thing when it takes off clutching your camcorder?
In any event, as you can see, they really don’t have the vaguest idea of how to present it to the public (which could account for a lot of their problems in garnering support for more funding). But someone (like you) could assemble the footage, create some incredible documentaries or even music videos.
Well, here’s an opportunity.
3 Comments
Adam December 13, 2010
It’s funny you should mention that. We totally agree. That’s why we created a show about space we call Spacevidcast. We do a live show from the back of my coffee shop every Thursday at 2AM CUT, that’s Coordinated Universal Time, as many of our viewers are international, so we don’t adhere to Daylight Savings.
In addition to the weekly live show where we cover all topics space-related, we provide live coverage of NASA launch events, typically running 6-8 hours continuously during a shuttle launch. In fact, we’re now considered ‘media’ by NASA itself, which has garnered us a press pass for launch events. This will enable live streaming from the Kennedy Space Center which we integrate with our HD feed from NASA.
Oh, did I mention we live stream NASA TV 24/7 in HD? Online. Even NASA doesn’t do that. We have a C-Band satellite dish in the parking lot of the coffee shop, capture the HD feed direct from NASA, and rebroadcast online. As NASA is pubic and free to use, we do. In HD.
And, we do all this with a Mac Pro.
Please join us sometime on our weekly live show, it’s quite entertaining as our hosts are not the typical NASA spokespeople. We integrate a live chat room into the mix as well, and our chat room regularly features rocket scientists, NASA engineers, defense contractor employees, and more space geeks than you can tweet.
Michael Rosenblum December 13, 2010
post the link!
Adam December 13, 2010
Sure, here you go: http://www.spacevidcast.com
Also, http://www.spacevidcast.com/Live
Not incidentally, the live show is actually *Friday* at 2AM Coordinated Universal Time, which translates to (as of now) Thursday evening @ 9PM EST/8PM CST/7PM MST/6PM PST.
I hesitate to post links in blog replies, as some admins interpret them as spam.
Thanks!