Apollo 11 launch revisited in slow-mo HD

Above: HD footage of the first 30 seconds of the Apollo 11 launch slowed down and analyzed as an 8-minute video.

Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch (HD) Camera E-8

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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JoshP

There is nothing not awesome about that video. From ‘quartz lens’ to the use of the term ‘ablative’ in a sentence. I’ve never seen metal heat so fast… It’s gotta be up above 800-900 degrees in a matter of seconds. Geekgasm.
- PhilTolton
  
  It’s funny, I enjoyed the very same things.
tuckels

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luZQOqF6oYk&feature=related
The same footage (lower quality) in real time, plus the launches of apollo 8 and 12. The apollo 11 launch starts at about 0:41.
nemofazer

Fantastic. Amazing. I read somewhere that 27% of Americans don’t believe man landed on the moon. Now that is a tragedy.
- coaxial
  
  Yeah, I know. It’s only 27%. Such a shame.
lorq

Wonderful video. Mesmerizing ballet of technology, heat, and power.
bassplayinben

Every time I see this clip, I am floored by the fire coming out of those engines! 1.5 million pounds of thrust from each engine, and the Saturn V had 5 of them!
Anonymous

“In my experience, about 80% of Europeans don’t believe that we went to the moon.”

No you are wrong. it is only few % pretty much like in the US.
Anonymous

yep, a Saturn V launch is probably cleaner than a shuttle launch. Just look at the exhaust: no trail of particulates. Those solid rocket boosters are fairly dirty. So if it’s contamination from launches that you’re worried about, the STS program probably polluted the site worse than the Saturn Vs did. Of course most Nike sites never fired a shot. The site polution is probably things like PCBs from transformers, solvents from washing equipment, lead paint chips and the like. Just about any industrial site from that period of time is going to have some degree of contamination.
dequeued

This was obviously an INSIDE JOB by the Zionists at the Bushco (sorry, now under “new” management as Obamaco)

You people are mind-controlled sheep if you really believe the official story of what happened.
According to the official story, NAZI scientists built a giant rocket filled with highly flammable fuel and launched it into space?
Why did it not fall over sideways??

And we analyzed the video in slow motion, it would have been physically impossible for an object with that mass to clear earth’s gravity well.

I know it may be painful to admit this, but your government has lied to you about Saturn 5.
- holtt
  
  It’s all true dequeued. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KEueJnsu80
Anonymous

This video was brought to you by massive amounts of win.
sam1148

Needs Philip Glass Music.
- Anonymous
  
  Metamorphosis number 8!
- Anonymous
  
  Yes it does!
Anonymous

The true power of a Saturn engine is best seen from a bit more of a distance. The closeup is impressive, but the awesome enormity of this engine’s output cannot be fully grasped with a closeup video.
hinges

I saw this the other day, and was utterly hypnotised by the way the fireball from ignition is sucked back down once the engines kick in.
KurtMac

Its not Philip Glass, but here is the same footage aptly set to the Battlestar Galactica score: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rXtG3vfAlA
Anonymous

if you’re hungry for more, here is 4,230 more Apollo related media items from nasaimages.org – including hours of slow motion video. All available for hi-res download. And if you’d rather view it at the Internet Archive: http://www.archive.org/details/nasa
sum.zero

the brightness blinded me and by 3:16 i couldn’t see anything. thankfully, my vision slowly returned and i was able to see some of the later parts of the film.
Anonymous

Hi,

Not hydrogen, that’s in the shuttle. This burns kerosene with LOX to get 1.5 million pounds of thrust per engine, and there were 5 engines. Less pollution than a 747, which doesn’t use liquid oxygen.

I wish we still had an assembly line for these!

JR
DewetronGrant

In my experience, about 80% of Europeans don’t believe that we went to the moon. They tell me all the time it was just a Hollywood stunt. That really infuriates me, to be honest. I guess it’s just a combination of jealousy and ignorance.
- peterbruells
  
  it’s about 20 to 30%, according to the reports I could find.
  
  About the same number as Americans, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing_conspiracy_theories
  
  By the way, I have a nice anecdote about of friend of a friend who got picked up from the airport in a Mercedes and got asked if they had cars like that in Germany. SCNR.
  
  Now, seriously: The European “No Moon Landing”-Kooks are probably those who get verbal about is. Someone who doesn’t believe that those were fake will usually not confront Americans about this.
  
  (“Hey, dude, is it true that you Americans did went to the Moon?”)
- Anonymous
  
  As a European I have no idea what you’re basing that on. Those who belive that it was a stunt are as many as people who believe any other conspiracy theory like 9/11 being a hoax; very few. And as for jealousy, the launch of the rocket owed more to the work of German scientists than it did American. Either way, it was an incredible event. You shouldn’t bother bringing “jealousy” into it.
DewetronGrant

Hey dequeued, grab a telescope and look at the stuff that we LEFT ON THE MOON. Jeez! Some people…
- peterbruells
  
  As far I know theres no telescope around which can actually make artifacts left on the moon visible. There’s a laser refractor, yes.
  
  However, technically speaking, it only proves that someone sent something to the Moon. The first sucessfull soft landing happend 1966, Luna 9. Luna 13 even returned with some moon dust, but that was after the manned American landing.
  
  Obligatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/202/
  - Anonymous
    
    You are correct, no land based telescope can make out images of man made objects on the moon. Even the LRO satellite currently orbiting the moon and taking hi-res images can barely make out the landing modules. You can look at the images yourself here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/apollosites.html
london2012

Bask in the glory, non-believers. Mankind at its finest.

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/sci-tech/chandrayaan-images-debunk-apollo-15-conspiracy-theory-scientist_100241727.html
Anonymous

These are HD in the same way I can take a 1080p video of a poster with 4 giant pixels on it. Sure, the source is only 4 pixels, but the video is 1080, and can pick up things like wrinkles, creases, dirt dust reflections etc.

Someone has captured an HD capture of what was on these old 16 millimeter films. Whether the original film captured anywhere near HD quality video (depends on media size: 16mm) and film grain size (unknown) is a bit harder to say.
Anonymous

This is one of the most Fascinating films I’ve ever seen….and Great Commentary, really opened my eyes to the mechanics of the launch pad.
jaytkay

Still holds the record, biggest payload and heaviest rocket ever launched.
Anonymous

How is this “HD” when that technology didn’t exist in 1969?
- TimmoWarner
  
  It is HD because the film used to record the images has been transferred to a digital file and made available in high definition.
  
  Previously consumers couldn’t view film images anywhere near their actual quality due to the limitations of their televisions. Now with good computer monitors old films can be viewed closer to they way they actually look.
  - Anonymous
    
    We need to take a step back and define “HD.”
Anonymous

would have like to seen the real time video at the end
middleclass

It makes me wonder how nasty the ground around there must be with pollutants. There is a decommissioned Nike Ajax installation outside of the town in which I live which is still leaching pollutants into nearby wells, despite two cleanup attempts.
- Chris Tucker
  
  Your concern has been noted.
- Anonymous
  
  We still can’t drink the tap water pretty much anywhere at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. I’m pretty sure the same stands true on the Kennedy side.
- Ronald Pottol
  
  Probably not too bad, I would guess, for starters, no hydrazine fuel (no nitrogen tetroxide either), or at least only trace amounts, and I expect NASA was a bit more careful that the military running sites for 15+ years. The exhaust is no worse than a car, kerosene (diesel/jet fuel) and liquid oxygen.
- Anonymous
  
  Yeah liquid oxygen and hydrogen sure are bad for the environment when burned.
- Anonymous
  
  You just don’t understand, this is a great day for America and it doesn’t seem to have a major impact on the Florida Eco system. I think you are just not informed about things and just are on the bandwagon.