Author Topic: New NASA documentary Friendship7  (Read 7795 times)

Offline rdale

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New NASA documentary Friendship7
« on: 02/13/2012 05:25 pm »
The first orbital spaceflight by an American, John Glenn, on Feb. 20, 1962, is highlighted in a new, NASA Television documentary premiering this Thursday at 8 p.m. EST.


Offline Art LeBrun

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Re: New NASA documentary Friendship7
« Reply #1 on: 02/13/2012 06:19 pm »
Just in time for next Monday's 50th anniversary.
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Offline Silmfeanor

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Re: New NASA documentary Friendship7
« Reply #2 on: 02/13/2012 07:14 pm »

Offline deaville

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Re: New NASA documentary Friendship7
« Reply #3 on: 02/13/2012 08:37 pm »
Doesn't time fly? It seems like only yesterday that I took a party of my students to see the film 'Friendship 7' at the US Embassy in London. As I recall, they were impressed but their lasting memory I discovered later was being able to sign the Book of Condolence to JFK who had been  assassinated just a week before.
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Offline Blackstar

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Re: New NASA documentary Friendship7
« Reply #4 on: 02/13/2012 09:27 pm »
It's a dramatic teaser that doesn't actually show anything.

NASA has sponsored some good documentaries in the past, and I'm hoping that they went back to the original film footage and remastered it for hi-def.

Offline zerm

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Re: New NASA documentary Friendship7
« Reply #5 on: 02/16/2012 10:53 am »
I guess I'll link this excellent NYT article here aswell:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/science/space/50-years-later-celebrating-john-glenns-great-feat.html?hp

The NYT piece says a lot in the fact that it says almost nothing about the flight itself. That would require research- something the NYT is unable to do. I can only hope that the video is better.

Offline Blackstar

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Re: New NASA documentary Friendship7
« Reply #6 on: 02/16/2012 01:11 pm »
I guess I'll link this excellent NYT article here aswell:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/science/space/50-years-later-celebrating-john-glenns-great-feat.html?hp

The NYT piece says a lot in the fact that it says almost nothing about the flight itself. That would require research- something the NYT is unable to do. I can only hope that the video is better.

They were more interested in a human interest piece, figuring that people would be more interested in reading about John Glenn now than in the actual space mission. It's a profile, really.
« Last Edit: 02/16/2012 03:26 pm by Blackstar »

Offline Proponent

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Re: New NASA documentary Friendship7
« Reply #7 on: 02/16/2012 01:15 pm »
The NYT piece says a lot in the fact that it says almost nothing about the flight itself. That would require research- something the NYT is unable to do. I can only hope that the video is better.

The piece provides date, duration (both in time and number of orbits), apogee, Glenn's observation of "fireflies," failure of the automatic stabilization-and-control system (ASCS) and reference to (though not description of) the erroneous deployed-landing-bag indication on the ground, and Glenn's own description of the view during re-entry.  It identifies the CAPCOM. and also discusses the numerous cancelations of launch attempts.  Several paragraphs, while not about the Friendship 7, are spaceflight-related, covering Glenn's second flight and his views about the current state of US spaceflight.  For an article in a general-circulation publication, I'd say it's pretty meaty.
« Last Edit: 02/16/2012 01:23 pm by Proponent »

Offline Blackstar

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Re: New NASA documentary Friendship7
« Reply #8 on: 02/17/2012 12:37 pm »
This was on last night and I taped it but have only seen a couple of minutes. It is only about 30 minutes long. It looks like they did great transfers of original footage to HD (although some of that footage was originally shot in 16mm, so it is grainy). However, some of the contemporary interviews looked washed out (over exposed). I was also somewhat disappointed to see Senator Nelson, which smacks of political patronage (i.e. NASA does a "documentary" that coincidentally includes one of its biggest political supporters).

Offline Rocket Science

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Re: New NASA documentary Friendship7
« Reply #9 on: 02/17/2012 01:06 pm »
With so much “original source” archival footage available my only question is why so short? Surely it could have been made to be an hour long for such an important flight. Other than that Sen. Glenn remains delightfully youthful and full of vigor.
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Offline rdale

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Re: New NASA documentary Friendship7
« Reply #10 on: 02/17/2012 01:46 pm »
Because this is 2012, and people don't want hour long documentaries of anything let alone a 40 year old spaceflight. Typical documentaries are ~40 minutes long with commercials.

Offline Blackstar

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Re: New NASA documentary Friendship7
« Reply #11 on: 02/17/2012 02:06 pm »
With so much “original source” archival footage available my only question is why so short? Surely it could have been made to be an hour long for such an important flight. Other than that Sen. Glenn remains delightfully youthful and full of vigor.

My suspicion is that they intend it for two audiences: schools and museum displays. They probably divided it up so that it could be shown as short segments on a video display in a museum.

In general, one-hour TV shows are only 42 minutes long with 18 minutes of commercials. However, you'll notice that lots of shows tend to spend the first 30 seconds after a commercial repeating the stuff that you saw before the commercial. My suspicion is that a lot of these shows really have only about 38-40 minutes of actual material.

Offline zerm

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Re: New NASA documentary Friendship7
« Reply #12 on: 02/17/2012 04:20 pm »
With so much actual R7/ Vostok launcher footage floating around out there, they kept showing Soyuz launches to illustrate the Sputnik and Vostok era... odd. But I really liked how they illustrated John Glenn's life, that part was very well done.

Offline rdale

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Re: New NASA documentary Friendship7
« Reply #13 on: 02/17/2012 11:14 pm »

Offline Phillip Clark

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Re: New NASA documentary Friendship7
« Reply #14 on: 02/18/2012 07:06 am »
With so much actual R7/ Vostok launcher footage floating around out there, they kept showing Soyuz launches to illustrate the Sputnik and Vostok era... odd. But I really liked how they illustrated John Glenn's life, that part was very well done.

The use of incorrect Soviet footage shows that whoever made the film is clearly lazy and doesn't care two hoots for accuracy.
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Offline Phillip Clark

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Re: New NASA documentary Friendship7
« Reply #15 on: 02/18/2012 07:11 am »
I can clearly remember the Friendship 7 flight.   It was a school day but our teacher had BBC Radio (the Third Programme I think) on all afternoon with the radio station given over totally to the flight's coverage.   Since I lived only five minutes away from the school I didn't miss much during the trip home.

Same thing happened with the Carpenter flight as well.
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Offline rdale

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Re: New NASA documentary Friendship7
« Reply #16 on: 02/18/2012 01:34 pm »
The use of incorrect Soviet footage shows that whoever made the film is clearly lazy and doesn't care two hoots for accuracy.

Are you in the right thread? This is about Friendship 7, not Soviet archives.

Offline zerm

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Re: New NASA documentary Friendship7
« Reply #17 on: 02/18/2012 05:31 pm »
he's on the right thread- he was responding to my comment above.

Offline rdale

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Re: New NASA documentary Friendship7
« Reply #18 on: 02/18/2012 06:32 pm »
Gotcha. I guess I don't see how those clips mean that they didn't care about accuracy.

Offline zerm

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Re: New NASA documentary Friendship7
« Reply #19 on: 02/18/2012 10:15 pm »
Gotcha. I guess I don't see how those clips mean that they didn't care about accuracy.

I'd probably say that rather than they don't care about accuracy, it's be better to say that they simply don't know about accuracy. Often NASA contracts these productions out I would guess and to folks in a production company a Russian rocket is simply a russian rocket. I mean, how often have we seen a Mercury Atlas represented by an Atlas ICBM with a warhead on it? Heck I have even seen NASA videos of "Apollo 9" represented by AS-503 with clips from AS-501 and 500F inserted. And you kind of sit in your chair and say "But...they're NASA! How can they do that?" Fact is, the average person doesn't know one from the other. Even in this documentary, the NASA "Historian" tells of remembering being a kid and sitting in front of the TV sweating out the reentry because of the landing bag glitch. As far as my research shows, Shorty Powers never made mention of the problem during the flight. So the media never knew about it until after the flight. So, he may "remember" that, but it could not have happened that way as far as I know. And just for accuracy- if anyone has information otherwise- feel free to post it here, because I'd really like to see or hear it myself.

Offline Beemer

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Re: New NASA documentary Friendship7
« Reply #20 on: 02/19/2012 12:05 am »
This was on last night and I taped it but have only seen a couple of minutes. It is only about 30 minutes long. It looks like they did great transfers of original footage to HD (although some of that footage was originally shot in 16mm, so it is grainy). However, some of the contemporary interviews looked washed out (over exposed). I was also somewhat disappointed to see Senator Nelson, which smacks of political patronage (i.e. NASA does a "documentary" that coincidentally includes one of its biggest political supporters).

I'm glad I'm not the only one who objects to Senator Nelson's presence in the film. He had nothing to do with the flight of Friendship 7. And to identify him as an astronaut is IMO disgusting.

I would have liked to have seen interviews with the flight controllers & technicians who actually made Friendship 7's flight possible although I realize many of them have passed away.
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Offline 93143

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Re: New NASA documentary Friendship7
« Reply #21 on: 02/19/2012 12:14 am »
And to identify him as an astronaut is IMO disgusting.

Why?

Offline Beemer

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Re: New NASA documentary Friendship7
« Reply #22 on: 02/19/2012 12:24 am »
And to identify him as an astronaut is IMO disgusting.

Why?

Because he didn't earn his way aboard his flight- he got it because he was a politician who influenced NASA's budget. Ditto Senator Jake Garn.

They took 2 seats away from people who had worked for years to acquire the skills & knowledge needed to fly on the shuttle, people for whom flying in space wasn't a political stunt but their life's ambition. I wouldn't be surprised in the least to learn that the shuttle astronauts deeply resented these 2 guys basically being handed seats on missions that they & their colleagues had worked so hard to earn. I know I would have been.
« Last Edit: 02/19/2012 12:27 am by Beemer »
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Offline QuantumG

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Re: New NASA documentary Friendship7
« Reply #23 on: 02/19/2012 12:30 am »
They may have worked so hard, but it was the politicians who paid for it - by which I mean, they stole the money from the taxpayers. If anyone has a right to be on the flight it is them, but of course no-one does. "We're all murderers in this room. Open your eyes! This is the life we chose, the life we lead. And there is only one guarantee ... none of us will see heaven."
Human spaceflight is basically just LARPing now.

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