Orbiter Spaceport

Here are some interesting videos that show NASA's big plans during the 1980s and early 1990s. The first big project was a large space station, called Space Station Freedom. This is one of the early configurations (the "dual-keel") shown as a miniature model. The footage manages to give some sense of scale of the completed station with the Shuttle docked. Another large project was crewed Moon and Mars missions. These 1990 animations show some nice early computer animations. The overall hardware design is not much different from present day proposals. As normal, the videos were assembled by joining sequences presented on diferent NASA documentaries. This allows to reconstruct the original resource reel and also to present a more complete view of the mission steps and hardware.

Apollo 8 launch highlights, from liftoff to orbit, from HD sources Launched on December 21, 1968, Apollo 8 was the first crewed spacecraft to orbit the Moon.  Some of the original footage was taken by engineering cameras at high frame rates and normally is shown in slow motion. Here it's presented in real speed, but taking advantage of 60 fps video for smother motion.  On the latter part of the ascent, images from Apollo 4 and 6 are used to illustrate stage separation, tower jettison and out the window views. These are also presented at approximate real speed.

Saturn I test flight videos, in real-time and with side-by-side rocket camera views The early Saturn I test flights (Saturn I SA-5 and Saturn I SA-6) are interesting visually because of the on-board camera footage, with good coverage of stage separation. SA-5 tested S-IV second stage ignition and SA-6 carried the first boilerplate Apollo spacecraft into low Earth orbit Since they where test flights, engineers needed images to record what was happening on the vehicle during flight. Most times these on-board cameras would run faster or slower than the standard 24fps film speed. Normally the sequences are shown with no compensation for that, but where I tried to show things in real time. I'm presenting these images in real time and side by side with the more common distant views. The original images come from multiple documentaries and film sources. Sound comes from a real Saturn I launch.