Posts: 1049
From: County Down, Nothern Ireland
Registered: Feb 2002

Posts: 596
From: Lansing, MI, USA
Registered: Mar 2012

Posts: 891
From: Vancouver, WA, USA
Registered: Feb 2012

posted 06-22-2012 07:00 AM               

---

Ahh ... the wonders of modern world! I remember sitting in front of our television with my 35mm camera on a little tripod, back in the late sixties and early seventies, snapping High Speed Ektachrome color slides off the screen during the Apollo, Skylab and ASTP missions.

Now, we can find those same video clips on the internet.

Posts: 307
From:
Registered: Jan 2008

Posts: 3324
From: Ontario, Canada
Registered: Oct 2010

Posts: 3160
From: Belfast, United Kingdom
Registered: Feb 2002

Posts: 57
From: New Jersey, US
Registered: May 2012

Posts: 221
From: Durham, NC, USA
Registered: Jun 2011

Posts: 2516
From: Guyton, GA
Registered: Jan 2006

posted 06-23-2012 06:33 AM               

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Headshot:
...my 35mm camera on a little tripod, back in the late sixties and early seventies, snapping High Speed Ektachrome color slides off the screen during the Apollo, Skylab and ASTP missions.

---

Hey, I thought I was the only one to do that! Except I used an old Brownie camera, then saved all of my allowance for processing the B&W film. I still have the albums I made.

For Skylab I switched to my Dad's 35mm and knew nothing about shutter speeds. Learned about TV's lines of resolution and shutter speeds, when my first try came back with black bars across the pictures in various places.

Posts: 891
From: Vancouver, WA, USA
Registered: Feb 2012

posted 06-23-2012 08:11 AM               

---

I learned about taking pics off the TV screen, along with focal plane shutters etc. when Star Trek was in its full swing.

By the time I graduated to a 35mm camera for Apollo, I had a routine going. I knew the shutter exposures and exactly where to put the camera and tripod. I also recorded the audio on an old, monstrous Webcor reel-to-reel tape recoder.

Fortunately my parents did not care about manned spaceflight, except for Apollo 11. With all that stuff by the television, it was almost impossible for anyone except me to see the screen. It was cute that, whenever I would start setting up all this paraphenalia, my mother would ask, "Are the launching another one?"

Posts: 1522
From: Greensboro, NC USA
Registered: Feb 2006

Posts: 422
From: Bratislava, Slovakia
Registered: Apr 2009

posted 06-23-2012 08:57 AM               

---

What a fantastic piece of history, simply beautiful!

And Jack King introduced himself twice (in this video) as "Apollo 7 Launch Control". Small slip coming obviously from the tension surrounding this historical journey. The Christmas of 1968 were a very special one indeed.

Posts: 1522
From: Greensboro, NC USA
Registered: Feb 2006

Posts: 1677
From: Birmingham AL
Registered: Aug 2010

Posts: 891
From: Vancouver, WA, USA
Registered: Feb 2012

posted 06-23-2012 11:25 AM               

---

I believe these posts illustrate the fact that we, as space exploration enthusiasts, were more perceptive than most, even though we were viewed as "odd." We were interested in something to which the average American at the time could not fully appreciate. Face it, most Americans, then and now, would not understand the differences between the, say, Gemini X and XI missions, even if you patiently explained it to them until you were blue in the face. Nor would they care.

Apollo VIII changed all that. Sending a manned spacecraft to the moon WAS something John Q. Public could understand and appreciate. Also remember that 1968 was one of the worst years in memory and Apollo VIII allowed us the finish it off on a very upbeat note. There was a quote that ran in Time magazine when they named the Apollo VIII crew Man of the Year than ran something like, "You saved 1968 for us."

Even today we still hold Apollo VIII as a truly historical event, not just another space shot. I tossed out my Star Trek slides long ago. But I have kept my "space" slides. To me, they represent my committment to space exploration. A couple of rolls of HS Ekatachrome plus developing was a substantial financial investment for a teenager back then. The DVD sets now available have all that coverage, in better definition than my slides, but they lack one thing - those little words at the bottom of the screen that ABC, NBC and CBS added ... "Live From the Moon."

Posts: 422
From: Bratislava, Slovakia
Registered: Apr 2009

posted 06-23-2012 01:59 PM               

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by ilbasso:
He's saying "Apollo-Saturn Launch Control," which he clearly says in other launches.

---

Thanks for correcting me. I listened to it more carefully and yes, you are right, it's "Apollo-Saturn..."

My wife complains I'm not hearing as good as years ago, so she is obviously right.

Posts: 260
From: UK
Registered: Jun 2004

Posts: 681
From: Bloomington, Illinois, USA
Registered: May 2005

Posts: 2272
From: Bellevue, NE, USA
Registered: Aug 2007

posted 07-03-2012 08:07 AM               

---

Considering the footage is from "When We Left Earth" it is most certainly artistic license (how much you want to bet several bits of the Apollo launch footage shown there are not from Apollo 8?).

Yes, the face shots are from the centrifuge runs. To my knowledge, the only time before recent shuttle flights when we got cabin footage of the astronauts during launch and ascent was Apollo Soyuz with one camera looking in on Slayton, Stafford and Brand (and the footage aired live). They certainly didn't put the camera right in the instrument panel since there was not any room (too many switches and readouts there).

Posts: 577
From: Germany
Registered: Dec 2003

Posts: 1332
From: Staten Island, NY
Registered: Jun 2007