Discovery Channel's "When We Left Earth"

[collectSPACE]

Discovery Channel will premiere two full episodes of When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions as single two-hour shows as follows:

Sunday, June 8 at 9:00 p.m. E/P
"Ordinary Supermen" and "Friends & Rivals"

Sunday, June 15 at 9:00 p.m. E/P
"Landing the Eagle" and "The Explorers"

Sunday, June 22 at 9:00 p.m. E/P
"The Shuttle" and "Home in Space"

Reviews:

USA Today: Discovery's 'When We Left Earth' aims high
New York Times: 50 Years of NASA’s Home Movies
Washington Post: Restored footage, interviews recount 50 years of spaceflight
collectSPACE: When we stayed at home to leave Earth

[collectSPACE]

More reviews:

LA Times: Discovery Channel's 'When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions'
New York Post: To The Moon! Recalling The Gutsy Heroes Who Led America To Its Oftiest Heights

[Andy_Small]

I can't wait to watch this.  I've got my DVR set to record as well.  It's going to be awesome!!!!!

[Bruce]

For those of us not in the US, you can view some of the video on their website.

Search for "when we left the earth", and on the right there's video results. All are only a few minutes long, but nice to see anyway.

Hubble
Shuttle
Classic NASA videos

Direct links to the videos:

When We Left Earth: Sneak Peek Promo
Inside the Shuttle - #1

[texas_space]

Thank goodness I know someone with an HDTV.  This should be sweet!

[collectSPACE]

Thank goodness I know someone with an HDTV.

For those without an HDTV, I would still encourage tuning in for the simulcast in standard definition, if only for the new interviews/comments by the 30+ astronauts and others included in the series.

[Quindar]

Looking forward to this series, HD-DVR fired up, will watch each more than once to savor the experience... Also glad that this material has been digitized to save it for posterity, when the film finally falls apart, it is lost forever so this is one important project to me, I would hope everything gets preserved before it is too late. History is too important to the future to let it corrode into oblivion. Many thanks Discovery Channel, NASA. 

[mtakala24]

So, are they airing two or three new episodes? There are three listed on the first post.

[DMeader]

So, are they airing two or three new episodes? There are three listed on the first post.

Two eps each Sunday for three consecutive Sundays. I'm glad they're doing that, rather than stretching it out over six weeks. PBS did that with "Carriers" recently... two episodes per evening (tho they did the whole ten episodes in five consecutive nights).

[Bruce]

Are they using NASA-sourced content, or their own? Apart from hoping that Discovery Channel show the series in the UK sometime, I was wondering about copyright.

[Jim]

It is NASA sourced content.  Appearing on Youtube wouldn't matter, it would be counter productive, since the content is HD

The content has been previously been release.

[collectSPACE]

Are they using NASA-sourced content, or their own?

The archival footage is of course NASA-sourced, but the interviews are property of Discovery, as is the narration and the particular way they have edited the NASA footage for their presentation. In other words, posting clips/episodes to YouTube (or anywhere else) without permission would be a violation of Discovery's copyright (outside of 'fair use' purposes).

(Discovery did donate more than 100 hours of high definition transfers to NASA but that material is not available until after the series airs.)

[Bruce]

So, it might become available from the NASA website later in the year? Just the NASA content I mean, not the stuff that would be copyright to Discovery. That would be good.

Anyone have contacts with Discovery Europe? Seems that it takes a year to get US content onto Discovery UK, but maybe as it's HD it might be sooner.

[lcs]

Frankly, someone from NASA should have read the script.  In the first two minutes the narrator stated that the "X-15 flew so high that the pilots experienced weightlessness".   

[John Charles]

Frankly, someone from NASA should have read the script.  In the first two minutes the narrator stated that the "X-15 flew so high that the pilots experienced weightlessness".   

X-15 pilots did experience weightlessness, but so do passengers in aircraft flying parabolic trajectories. 

But the first episode seems (after 45 minutes) to have some interesting footage and the usual breathless, overwrought text. 

[Orbiter]

Watching it now, it seems pretty good! And in better quality.

[soldeed]

Armstrong speaks!!

[Orbiter]

Armstrong speaks!!

 Holy crap! Your right! I really never heard before what he sounds like.
Finally, hes speaking.

[K8B]

Its nice that it is archive footage heavy... less of individual people talking (with camera on them) and more of the old films (with Gary Sinise & nasa people talking) during the footage. And... yes, wow - Armstrong... it's like seeing a solar eclipse from Seattle  . Super nice in HD!!

[Thorny]

Anyone know if WWLE is going to be rebroadcast on Discovery HD Theater? I was excited when I first heard about the HD transfer that Discovery was going to show, but the program was only shown on the regular Discovery Channel, which my cable company doesn't offer in HD. It doesn't appear on Discovery HD Theater anytime in the next two weeks according to TiVo.

It still looked good in SD, though.

A few oddities... several shots of Titan I's blowing up that the narration suggested were Titan II's, for example. But overall, I thought it was excellent.