Everyone that was alive can remember where they were when they heard of this.
From the Description:
Apollo 11 landed on the Moon on July 20th, 1969, a little after 4:00in the afternoon Eastern Daylight Time. The Lunar Module, nicknamed Eagle and flown by Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, touched down near the southern rim of the Sea of Tranquility, one of the large, dark basins that contribute to the Man in the Moon visible from Earth. Armstrong and Aldrin spent about two hours outside the LM setting up experiments and collecting samples. At one point, Armstrong ventured east of the LM to examine a small crater, dubbed Little West, that he’d flown over just before landing.
The trails of disturbed regolith created by the astronauts’ boots are still clearly visible in photographs of the landing site taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) narrow-angle camera (LROC) more than four decades later.
LROC imagery makes it possible to visit the landing site in a whole new way by flying around a three-dimensional model of the site. LROC scientists created the digital elevation model using a stereo pair of images. Each image in the pair shows the site from a slightly different angle, allowing sophisticated software to infer the shape of the terrain, similar to the way that left and right eye views are combined in the brain to produce the perception of depth.
Interesting. But irrelevant. Can anyone tell us if this technology is being used for any useful purpose? Like somehow helping us to better understand the earth we live on? Or is it just a job creation thing for some NASA employees?
What technology are you referring to? Computer driven video effects are now common in movies. You can be sure that the Pentagon got some very good video of the shooting down of the passenger liner over the Ukraine.
This is NOT “computer driven video effects” as seen in movies. The LROC appears to take multiple low angle stereo photographs of the actual terrain, which are then manipulated to give the “fly around the site” views, something far different than making superheroes leap over buildings. This is the real thing processed in a different way.
If the Pentagon has “very good video”, I suspect it will be mainly from the heat sensing satellites, and will not be what you think it is.
This LROC might be useful in tracking mountain glacier retreat, as well as sea and ice cap retreat, although we do have other satellites that do that job without actually “taking pictures”.
Actually LROC is based on the same technology as the “computer driven video effects” that you often see in the movies. That’s part of it. (You’ll notice that cartoon figures. are no longer “flat images”.) It’s now added the 3D feature to create stereo effects. I was involved with some of the early technology back in the 1990s that revolutionized the video production business and simulators (which is what I was working on.)
OK, they now use the technology to create videos from satellite data. That’s just one application. You might note that stereo photography revolutionized photo reconnaissance during WWII. It’s how the first V-2 rocket development was discovered by the British.
I don’t know why you’re bothering to argue this, but using a computer to manipulate actual photographs is simply NOT the same as “computer driven video effects in movies”, beyond the fact that a computer is used in both cases.
The LROC images are real, and there is nothing fictional added—-the “technology” is used to allow them to be viewed differently, that’s all. In the movies, some scenes are totally fictional, others may have a live character, but everything else is blue or green-screened in around the character. The LROC 3-D is produced from actual stereoscopic photographs, rather than the way cartoons are made from drawings.
And to get back to my original comment, what is the practical application of this technology with respect to NASA?. All we have to show for all the moon effort is a few rocks and now some photos of footprints, and perhaps some technology like teflon, velcro, better computer software, and better life rafts. Why do we continue to pour money down the NASA look-at-the-moon rathole when we have more pressing needs? To get ready for a Mars landing, perhaps? A lot of pork and profit to spread around there.
Reread the post and my comments—you are misinterpreting it badly.
You might want to look at this:
http://everestavalanchetragedy.com/mt-everest-journey.html
Why might I want to “look at this”? What’s your point?
It looks like a “slide show”—–a series of photos taken from aircraft and from the ground with telephoto lenses and strung together with a computer, although some of the shots of the very top look “computer generated” more than those lower down. And it has a red line and and some labels pasted on to show us the route climbers take?. Big Whoop.
Or is your point that some of the intermediate shots are totally “computer generated” by digital interpolation between actual photos? Again, if so, that’s just manipulation of real images, and not computer drawn or green-screened.
I was alive but 2 years old. Fast asleep at the time. Maybe hence.
I was 29. You have missed some interesting times while you were growing up over the subsequent 45 years. (Are you REALLY 47?)