Friday, June 18, 2010

Apollo XI Lift-Off In Super Slow Motion

Stumbled across this while looking for something else. The film was shot at 500 frames-per-second, and when played back at normal 24 frames-per-second, it stretches about 30 seconds of time out to around 9 minutes.
I've got a bunch of video like this from my former employer, as we used to make a "Mission DVD" for the customers and Launch Crew. You'll hear the guy talk about the ablative coating used on some of the equipment, and how it's supposed to burn off to protect the equipment under the coating. One of my jobs on the Range Team was to maintain all the launch cameras and housings. The ablative coating is a bear to work with. Really messy, and toxic stuff requiring special handling. At one time we recoated the camera enclosures (they're made of 1/2" thick steel plate!) every mission. Stripping the stuff off and reapplying it got to be such a PITA that we talked to some of the Range people down at Cape Canaveral. They told us to just wire brush the charred areas, and recoat the places where the coating was getting thin. It saved us HOURS of back breaking labor. The fused quartz camera windows also got replaced every mission. They were a double layer design, and about half the time the outer window would shatter. One time we lost both windows, and the exhaust plume took out the camera in that position. We were able to save the film, but the camera was pretty blasted!
Enjoy the video!

Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch (HD) Camera E-8 from Mark Gray on Vimeo.

1 comment:

  1. Interesting.... keep up the great work!!

    Steve
    Common Cents
    http://www.commoncts.blogspot.com

    ps. Link Exchange???

    ReplyDelete

Keep it civil, please....

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