[HN Gopher] Earth Restored - 50 restored images of earth released
___________________________________________________________________
Earth Restored - 50 restored images of earth released
Author : cyberhost
Score : 384 points
Date : 2021-04-24 08:34 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.tobyord.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.tobyord.com)
| Razengan wrote:
| Ugh, cannot zoom in or save on iOS (easily, but I better not
| mention how in case they disable that workaround too)
| jordemort wrote:
| As a kid, I really wanted to be an astronaut. I didn't make it,
| although I did go to Space Camp. It's mostly something I don't
| think about anymore, until I see pictures like this - looking at
| the entire planet just floating there in space does something to
| my brain. I hope space tourism will become accessible to non-
| billionaires in my lifetime!
| quercusa wrote:
| By middle school I knew I'd never be an astronaut but I would
| have really liked to go to Space Camp.
| quercusa wrote:
| This is a great line:
|
| >With great foresight, NASA equipped the astronauts with some of
| the best cameras ever made -- specially modified Hasselblads,
| with Zeiss lenses, and 70mm Kodak Ektachrome film.
| proc0 wrote:
| So stars are not visible from space? I'm assuming not because
| they're not in the pictures, but because there are no pictures of
| just stars from space, which I assume would be a point of
| interest for any astronaut. That is weird, and I wonder if almost
| every single sci-fi scene in space should have no stars as well.
| evan_ wrote:
| Stars are visible in space but the Earth is so bright that if
| you expose it properly, the stars are underexposed. It's
| basically the same reason we don't see the stars in the
| daytime: the sun is much brighter.
| proc0 wrote:
| Right but does that mean astronauts don't see stars because
| it's always "daytime" in space? If we can see the Milky Way
| in the night sky of remote places away from cities, then the
| atmosphere must be playing a huge role in allowing us to see
| stars. I'm just wondering if those night skies are also
| visible in space, perhaps from the dark side of the moon.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > then the atmosphere must be playing a huge role in
| allowing us to see stars.
|
| It does not. The Earth blocking out the light from the Sun
| (and the side of the Earth facing it) does.
|
| Of course, that _also_ works in space, and stars are
| visible in space:
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/stargazing-from-the-
| inter...
| shash7 wrote:
| Great photos, and a great website too.
| vegetablepotpie wrote:
| It's hard to believe that it's been over 50 years since humans
| have been outside of low earth orbit. It's like we sprinted
| forward so fast, going from horse drawn carriage to space flight
| in a generation, only to get frightened and recede back from the
| highest point, never to go back.
|
| Granted there has been an enormous amount of innovation in the
| last 50 years, but by some accounts we've been going backwards.
| Humans are no longer capable of mach 3 flight, or making Roman
| concrete.
|
| I think we assume that technology will keep progressing. We
| assume Moore's law will continue into the future and we forget
| that there are people behind the progress. The technology that
| produced those pictures are gone, we might be able to take ones
| like them again, but never with the same rockets and never with
| the same photo-chemical processes. Progress is fragile, not
| inevitable and everything we have can be lost in a generation
| just as easily as it was made.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| > Humans are no longer capable of mach 3 flight, or making
| Roman concrete
|
| We have plenty of aircraft capable of mach 3 or faster just not
| for commercial purposes, and most modern concrete is superior
| to Roman concrete in most dimensions specifically cost (not to
| mention its modern mythos is completely based on a single study
| published in American Mineralogist).
| ghaff wrote:
| The supersonic passenger flight thing is the one I have to
| really chuckle at. Nothing against the work being done in
| this area--hey, not my money. But effectively you have lots
| of folks, who probably mostly fly coach, super-excited that
| maybe one day CEOs and high-end lawyers will once again be
| able to fly from NY to London to have lunch, shake hands on a
| deal, and be home in time for dinner.
| curtainsforus wrote:
| The passenger flight thing is the one I have to really
| chuckle at. Nothing against the work being done in this
| area--hey, not my money. But effectively you have lots of
| folks, who probably mostly take trains, super-excited that
| maybe one day CEOs and high-end lawyers will be able to fly
| from NY to London.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| France is actually doing something very sensible here
| (banning domestic flight between cities if the travel
| time by train is under 2.5 hrs):
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56716708
| anchpop wrote:
| why is that sensible?
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah. If there's good train service, it probably makes
| more sense to take the train. But if I'm flying through a
| city to get to another city, switching transportation
| modes can be a pain. e.g. Normally I'd take a train from
| (downtown) Manhattan to (downtown) Philadelphia. But if
| I'm flying into a NYC airport on my way to Philadelphia,
| that's a terrific hassle especially with luggage.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| You really need to take the power and "reality distortion
| effect" of propaganda during the Cold War into account.
|
| Massive projects were started without much rational sense just
| to beat the other side in an imaginary race (and a very
| concrete military race). What's the point of landing a man on
| the moon, if the technology to do so was so rushed and held
| together by duct tape that it wasn't useful for anything else?
| What's the point of the Space Shuttle if launches were more
| expensive than disposable rockets? What's the point of the
| Buran, if the Soviets didn't feel like they need an answer to
| the space shuttle "just in case", even though they couldn't see
| any point in the shuttle design (except as a nuke carrier)?
|
| Etc... etc... the list goes on for both sides. I rather have
| slow and steady progress that actually makes economical and
| scientific sense in the long run.
|
| PS: I thought the secret of Roman concrete had been cracked
| long ago (a certain type of volcanic ash)? But it's just not
| economical to produce large quantities since modern sky
| scrapers are not expected to "survive" for thousands of years
| anyway (and AFAIK the Romans didn't know much about the special
| properties of their concrete either, it more or less was a
| "happy little accident").
| leadingthenet wrote:
| > since modern sky scrapers are not expected to "survive" for
| thousands of years anyway
|
| And maybe that's a problem! Why exactly are we not building
| beautiful landmarks that will survive eons like the Romans
| did?
|
| We have a throwaway culture, and nobody ever dares question
| it.
| kingkawn wrote:
| even more insidious is our culture of hollow sentimentality
| WJW wrote:
| I think you are suffering a bit from survivorship bias
| here. Way less than 0.001% of Roman buildings are still
| standing and the ones that remain have been continuously
| maintained over the centuries. If humanity will keep
| maintaining the White House for centuries it will look just
| as good in 4021 as it does today.
| jbay808 wrote:
| It's mostly not survivorship bias, actually, and the ones
| that remain _haven 't_ been continuously maintained over
| the centuries. Many of the ones still standing today
| suffered from centuries of neglect, damage in war and
| rebellion, and even were actively looted for materials to
| build other buildings from. Others just got gradually
| buried by floods (or volcanos, etc) and are intact
| underground.
| leadingthenet wrote:
| The White House is not a modernist / postmodernist
| building that was designed with planned obsolescence in
| mind, so I'm not entirely sure why you've used it as an
| example. In fact, it's a perfect example of a beautiful
| neoclassical landmark that was intended to inspire and
| last through the ages.
|
| Survivorship bias is always brought up in these
| discussions, but I believe it to just be a cop-out. Take
| a look at any well-preserved medieval / renaissance /
| early industrial era city in Europe (Bruges, Edinburgh,
| Venice). They are all absolutely gorgeous, even the
| buildings used historically by the lower classes (ones
| that were not even built with longevity in mind).
|
| No, something flipped around the 1920s, and architecture,
| along with our whole societal philosophy around it, has
| clearly changed. I'd argue that it's for the worse.
| Retric wrote:
| Needs changeover time. Thick stone walls can provide
| insulation, but their hell on WiFi etc.
|
| Growing up in a 200+ year old building you find a lot of
| architectural designs and modifications that don't fit
| with modern usage. Pre AC maximizing summer cooling
| involved maximizing airflow where now we want maximum
| insulation. Before central heating we wanted chimney's
| everywhere. And before wood stoves we wanted giant
| fireplaces everywhere. Even central heating has gone
| through several iterations, many different radiator
| designs for steam/water, central air, and now a zigzag of
| pipes underfloor.
|
| Very old buildings may look nice, but they aren't
| inherently better.
| leadingthenet wrote:
| > Very old buildings may look nice, but they aren't
| inherently better
|
| I never said they were. I only said that they were built
| to last and that they were infinitely more aesthetically
| pleasing because we actually gave a damn about these
| things as a society. Now we don't.
|
| Old buildings can be upgraded (I should know, I live in
| one, and have both functional pipes, insulation, heating,
| and Wi-Fi). So let's upgrade them, and let's ALSO ensure
| that whatever we build today includes not only modern
| amenities, but are also objects we can be proud of
| leaving as a legacy to future generations. Just like our
| ancestors did for literally millennia.
| Retric wrote:
| > we actually cared about this things as a society
|
| No, the buildings that survived are generally more
| aesthetically pleasing, most old buildings where shacks.
| Walk around an old plantation for example and the slaves
| quarters didn't survive. Search around for some original
| outhouses and you realize what survived isn't simply
| representative of what was built.
| woodruffw wrote:
| > In fact, it's a perfect example of a beautiful
| neoclassical landmark that was intended to inspire and
| last through the ages.
|
| I'm going to go out on a limb here, and guess that you've
| never been to the White House: it's a mildewed, creaky
| mess that was gutted twice (once by war[1], again to
| prevent it from collapsing under its own misdesign[2]).
| It undergoes constant, active maintenance, and is not
| intended by any means to "last through the ages."
|
| But to get to the actual point: the neoclassical style is
| built on a historical lens. It takes classical
| architecture _on face value_ , as it was in the 18th
| century (i.e., weather-washed and in ruins). Its appliers
| wanted to promote their interpretation of classical
| greatness, which corresponds in no particular way to the
| _actual_ greatness of cultures in the classical period.
| The Romans would have laughed at our neoclassical use of
| blindingly white marble[3].
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812
|
| [2]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_Reconstruction
|
| [3]: https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/prms/hd_prms.htm
| flohofwoe wrote:
| That way lies a slippery slope ;) It's pretty close to the
| "Ruinenwerttheorie" of the German Nazis:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruin_value
| [deleted]
| curtainsforus wrote:
| From the first wikipedia paragraph, I don't see anything
| wrong with building things so they'll look cool a) when
| they're maintained and in use and b) when they're badly
| maintained and crumbling. I'll take 'Ruinenwerttheorie'
| buildings over brutalist concrete piles that look
| disgusting the day they're built and worse as they age.
|
| The 3rd Reich had a lot of problems, but they had some
| good aesthetics (Huge Boss, etc). To ignore that, and
| shun a whole realm of aesthetics because it was
| appreciated by The Devil, is a waste and a poor strategic
| move; you're abandoning the beautiful elements because
| they had the misfortune to be mixed into a dark brew.
| It's an artistic tragedy, and a poor political move,
| putting you in a similar spot to the 3rd Reich themselves
| with regards to their ideas about 'degenerate art'.
|
| The height of technology, and we cloak ourselves in
| ugliness and mediocrity, not daring to build anything
| beautiful. What a fucking waste. The sorts of small-
| souled people who build modern western identikit cities
| don't deserve to go to the moon.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| I think the point is that it takes a sort of hubris
| that's quite typical for autocratic regimes to show off
| to the rest of the world - and future generations - with
| gigantomanic architecture.
|
| IMHO a healthy society should be "above" this sort of
| stuff.
| leadingthenet wrote:
| Instead of showing off to the rest of the world, we
| should ensure that people feel oppressed and demoralized
| by their every day surroundings. That'll show those
| autocrats!
| curtainsforus wrote:
| What we have in our oh-so-humble and "advanced" society
| is the children of corbusier making horrendous buildings
| that make the people with no choice but to live in them
| miserable.
|
| Is the parthenon gigantomanic? Is this?
| https://cdn.lifedaily.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/01/22-most...
|
| Is this? https://preview.redd.it/hkwpt88wasv41.jpg?width=
| 1024&auto=we...
|
| Or this? https://blog.eurail.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2016/07/Florence-...
|
| Because I know a city made of buildings like the above is
| far more conducive to human dignity than a grid of
| "humble" glass boxes.
|
| Should we all be living in and surrounded by identikit,
| homogenous apartments? Except for the architects and the
| rich, of course; they get to have centuries-old country
| mansions to flee to.
|
| It isn't humble to humiliate people by making them to
| live in concrete and glass cages.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| I don't quite understand how y'all came to the conclusion
| that I want people to live in ugly glass and concrete
| blocks :)
|
| I _do_ doubt however that many people today would want to
| live in genuine old buildings with the outhouse toilet
| across the yard. It 's more likely that they want to live
| in a modern flat built into the hull of an old building.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Brutalism was adopted by the Soviets, who were also
| pretty oppressive.
|
| I'd rather live in a beautiful building than a concrete
| square. The idea that people should live in purely
| functional environments with no room for beauty or art is
| a purely modernist idea.
| pmarreck wrote:
| I might be a minority opinion but I think brutalist
| architecture can be beautiful. My local library
| (https://www.yelp.com/biz/port-washington-public-library-
| port...) is quite brutalist but is also one of my
| favorite libraries. Its reading room alone (the library
| sits up on a hill and the reading room has one wall of
| all-glass-and-concrete which looks out onto Manhasset
| Bay) is amazing.
|
| Actually, it seems that it crept back into vogue while I
| wasn't paying attention!:
| https://www.gq.com/story/9-brutalist-wonders-of-the-
| architec...
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Taste is individual, but I just don't understand how you
| could find a heap of concrete slabs to be beautiful. To
| me, beauty is life-affirming, and brutalism is the
| physical embodiment of a philosophy that denies life in
| favour of rigid functional structure. It's the physical
| representation of kafkaesque bureaucracy.
| pmarreck wrote:
| I'm glad you're respecting taste, especially when you're
| throwing such anthropomorphological argument against it
| ;)
|
| I'm not sure why there is such a significant aesthetic
| difference between cutting stones and stacking them
| (masonry architecture) and filling the exact same form
| with concrete, especially when the latter is usually far
| more robust and thus, safer (read: _actually_ life-
| affirming, by being neither flammable nor easily
| collapsible, if designed right) and also permitting
| structural forms that are simply not possible using any
| other medium
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Architecture follows philosophy. Skyscrapers
| (internationalist style) and large curved glass buildings
| (modernist style) have the same core philosophy as
| neoliberalism, for instance. Brutalism came about as an
| explicit rejection of aesthetics and "higher purpose" to
| building facades - an idea deeply rooted in materialist
| philosophy, hence its adaptation by the Soviets. The
| grandparent comment demonstrates this perfectly: "IMHO a
| healthy society should be "above" this sort of stuff".
| Your argument to building materials is also an example of
| this - while it's true, it is reductionist; living in a
| concrete jungle is not better than living in a wooden
| fishing village just because the materials are less
| flammable.
|
| The philosophy of architecture isn't really a
| "anthropomorphological argument" when architecture exists
| for humans, at the behest of humans, and represents human
| values. The idea that a building is just a box that
| people exist in is itself a philosophical position, one
| that is exemplified by brutalism, and one that I and many
| other people are opposed to.
| astroflask wrote:
| > What's the point of the Space Shuttle if launches were more
| expensive than disposable rockets? What's the point of the
| Buran, if the Soviets didn't feel like they need an answer to
| the space shuttle "just in case", even though they couldn't
| see any point in the shuttle design (except as a nuke
| carrier)?
|
| Rather than nukes, I always thought the main advantage of the
| Shuttle was the ability to bring things back to Earth. Which
| it did, a few times:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-32
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-51-A
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-57
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-72
|
| When then Shuttle was proposed, this was one of the main
| selling points. Having used it just 4 times over 133
| missions... Well, that's not what was envisioned.
| Bjartr wrote:
| One designed advantage that, AFAIK, was never leveraged is
| the ability to launch to space and land in a single orbit.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| AFAIK the Russians were mainly concerned about the ability
| of the Space Shuttle to quickly change its orbital plane,
| combined with the planned high frequency of flights (which
| never happened though) and high cargo capacity.
|
| Put a few nukes on the Shuttle, and you can drop them
| anywhere in the world with much less warning time than
| intercontinental ballistic missiles. At least that's what I
| read about the reasoning of the Russians building their own
| shuttle, because when they ran the numbers on the Space
| Shuttle they concluded that a "civilian use" didn't make
| much sense.
| astroflask wrote:
| Changing orbital plane requires delta V, and the Shuttle
| had barely enough to make it to LEO (the highest it ever
| went was servicing the Hubble).
|
| Cargo capacity... Not that much really, since you're
| carrying yourself a whole lot of orbiter already. It had
| a large volume in the cargo bay, and the mentioned
| ability to retrieve things in that cargo bay.
|
| But yes, DoD/military influenced the design of the
| Shuttle. It just turns out they never used the
| capabilities they requested. And so you end up with a
| craft that makes little sense for civilian use, except
| for the building of a massive space station in orbit and
| eventual servicing of satellites.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Would the ISS be possible without the Shuttle?
| rainbowzootsuit wrote:
| From some distant memory the dimensions of the Space
| Shuttle cargo bay was specifically matched to accommodate
| the launch and servicing of the Hubble Space telescope.
| I'm not sure which design drove which.
| vkou wrote:
| The HST was a close variant of various military spy
| satellites. The difference is that it was pointed into
| space, as opposed to towards Earth.
|
| Consider that a large number of Shuttle missions were
| classified, then put two and two together...
| inimino wrote:
| > without much rational sense just to beat the other side
|
| Assumes that just beating the other side was not a sufficient
| rational motive. Which, given that the threat both sides
| faced was "you and your way of life will be utterly
| obliterated", is a pretty irrational criticism.
|
| What's the point of <X>, if <something we only learned by
| doing X>? There's tremendous hindsight bias in criticising
| even the Shuttle program on the basis of what we know _now_ ,
| while disregarding the value of everything we learned from
| doing it.
|
| Even copying another country's technology on the basis of
| speculative military applications may not be irrational,
| unless you're somehow privy to all the knowledge that was
| available at the time when those decisions were made.
|
| The remarkable MAD doctrine itself can be criticised as
| inhumane or insane, but hardly irrational. It's a triumph of
| rationality and a counter-intuitive application of game
| theory, the iron laws of mathematics elevated to places where
| we really would rather see common sense and humanity prevail.
| projectileboy wrote:
| For what it's worth, the space race along with the desire to
| build up missile technology in general are the reason we have
| computers today as we know them. Not many people outside of
| the space and defense industries were willing to shell out
| buckets of cash for a single transistor.
| jeromenerf wrote:
| Meanwhile a little copter is spinning its wings. On Mars. Mars
| dammit.
| hyko wrote:
| Technology has not regressed since the 1970s though. We have
| the latent capability to go any time we want, it's just very
| expensive and there's no point.
| pbronez wrote:
| Still planning to do it again within the next decade just to
| reassure ourselves about it.
| hyko wrote:
| The most expensive reality TV show ever made.
| willis936 wrote:
| Actually doing it is important. "I can go to the moon
| anytime I want" stops being true after a solid generation
| of not doing it. There is institutional knowledge in doing
| something in the present world. Further, specs and
| documents are nice, but rarely sufficient. A famous example
| is the F-1 engine. Every one of them was made off spec and
| if you took the factory drawings alone you would never make
| a working engine. You need builders who understand the
| design and modify it.
|
| It's all possible to do this, but the longer you wait to do
| it again, the more factors change and the more work it will
| be.
|
| NIF exists to keep a team of nuclear bomb experts warm in
| case we need them. It isn't to make a power plant or to
| make new bombs; it's just there to keep the kettle warm.
|
| Anecdote: I work at a physics project. When the PI asked
| for 200 million USD to build a new machine after 20 years
| they were awarded 3 millions USD to do an upgrade to the
| old machine. The funders are making sure that a team can
| still be assembled and get shit done under the PI's
| leadership. If the upgrade goes on time and on budget then
| the new machine might be on the table.
|
| The same thing is going on with many physics projects.
| Small prototypes get funded. "If you can make that and it
| works, then we'll talk about the next step." It's slow, but
| it's safe.
| astroflask wrote:
| For SLS a group looked into making boosters powered by
| modernized F-1's... Turns out a lot of knowledge about
| welding them had been lost. They managed to get an old
| unflown F-1A to work, but it's a bit unclear how much
| they managed to do with the new design, the F-1B.
| Wikipedia[0] has a few details and some links, but it
| falls short of telling the end fate of this effort.
|
| Obviously, the F-1B booster wasn't picked for the SLS and
| they went with the improved 5-segment SRBs[1].
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocketdyne_F-1#F-1B_booster
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Solid_Roc
| ket_Boo...
| sfifs wrote:
| > Actually doing it is important. "I can go to the moon
| anytime I want" stops being true after a solid generation
| of not doing it. There is institutional knowledge in
| doing something in the present world. Further, specs and
| documents are nice, but rarely sufficient. A famous
| example is the F-1 engine. Every one of them was made off
| spec and if you took the factory drawings alone you would
| never make a working engine. You need builders who
| understand the design and modify it
|
| And I'd argue that's exactly why I'd argue the
| fundamental approach of the 60s/70s rocket engineers was
| fundamentally flawed. It was a vanity project and so it
| died after vanity was satisfied.
|
| The assembly line and standardisation approach SpaceX
| takes is much superior and much more sustainable.
| willis936 wrote:
| I agree. Importantly Space-X's engines are actually
| cutting edge. They are the best performers man has made,
| so we're not walking backwards. However, that progress
| was not guaranteed and if we stopped all space travel for
| fifty years there would need to be another monumental
| effort to relearn how to build rockets.
|
| I play with CRTs as a hobby. It's popular these days, but
| it will never be popular enough to manufacture another
| CRT. The last assembly lines closed a decade ago. The
| physics knowledge is there, and electronics have gotten
| better, but it would take many iterations to make a
| trinitron equivalent in another 20 years. The people who
| understood the magnetics (ie how horizontal output
| transistor and flyback transformer characteristics
| interacted with the impedance of the steering coils) are
| dead or retired. The same for the experts in mask
| manufacturing. We can figure it all out again and do it
| better than ever, but it would be a lot more work than if
| we had continued making them.
|
| Again, it'll never happen because they're too big and
| require too much material compared to other display
| technologies. It's just interesting how fast they
| disappeared when they were an integral part of human
| society for nearly all of the 20th century.
| hyko wrote:
| I agree that there's probably not much value in just
| retreading the old specs, but I'd argue that just having
| the knowledge that it has been achieved in practice still
| puts you ahead of the engineers in 1961, and that the
| intervening decades of progress put you even further
| ahead.
|
| There's no reason to think that an equally well funded
| greenfield effort couldn't land on the moon from a
| standing start within a decade; it's not like we're
| living in the shadow of an ancient advanced civilisation
| with no present day industrial capacity.
| willis936 wrote:
| No and I agree. Saying that we've regressed in rocket
| science or concrete in any capacity is a fantasy.
| However, if things go stale then we could be forced to
| invest a lot of money to discover things we've already
| discovered.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I think it's a case of picking the low hanging fruits once the
| technology is unlocked, then moving on.
|
| We have the same not only with space but with everything.
|
| Steampunk is essentially the feature we never had with advanced
| enough mechanical machines. Somehow we sprinted towards
| harnessing the energy of the steam stoping short from coal
| powered AI robots but was that the case? IMHO what happened is,
| we exploited the feasible part and moved on.
|
| The same with space. With the science and tech we harnessed so
| far, it's simply not feasible to do more than what we have done
| already. With the advancements made in recent decades, some
| more stuff might have moved within the range of feasible but
| nothing revolutionary. We are not going to the nearest star
| anytime soon and that's not simply because we lost interest in
| it. The best we probably can do in human travel is Mars.
| pimlottc wrote:
| > I think we assume that technology will keep progressing. We
| assume Moore's law will continue into the future and we forget
| that there are people behind the progress. The technology that
| produced those pictures are gone, we might be able to take ones
| like them again, but never with the same rockets and never with
| the same photo-chemical processes. Progress is fragile, not
| inevitable and everything we have can be lost in a generation
| just as easily as it was made.
|
| It's good to be aware of our blindspots. The idea of progress
| as a monotonically increasing upward trend is a very modern and
| Western perspective. It's not inevitable.
| 2III7 wrote:
| If you had the money, you could rent a rocket from SpaceX and
| send a film camera to take more pictures. But what would be the
| point?
| avereveard wrote:
| such a nihilistic view has little ground in reality
|
| > been outside of low earth orbit
|
| we stopped pushing that frontier because we've been there and
| found it dull and empty, as a matter of fact, we decided zero g
| experiment were more important than playing with regolith, and
| build a freaking human habitat in the void to support that
| endeavor. beside, we've got regolith here on earth now, we can
| experiment on it in the commodity of our backyard if needed be.
|
| > mach 3 flight
|
| except the routine space launches that ship scientist back and
| forth from the space station, going through literal plasma on
| the descent leg.
|
| > Roman concrete
|
| this has just been widely romanticized, we don't use that
| because it's incompatible with fast building processes
| requirements, is too heavy for large structures and it's hard
| to dismantle when a structure is no longer needed or need
| renovation.
|
| sure, some other stuff one can cite as having reached an
| apparent sub-optimal minima, like average speed of travel, but
| that's not because we're backward, it's because we're learning
| to take care of our own environment. slowly, but we're getting
| there. just because the tradeoff are different it doesn't mean
| that a golf id3 is just worse than a bugatti eb110 or a recess
| from peak technology.
| Griffinsauce wrote:
| Your last point resonated with me. An extremely boring
| electric car that makes some significant leap in
| affordability, efficiency or whatever can be the thing that
| brings our entire society forward and literally saves it.
|
| If anything you can argue that the latest Bugatti with a
| slightly larger engine is moving us _backwards_ by the waste
| of resources (in design, production and use).
|
| Peak technology right now is not the big sexy machine, it's
| whatever makes the good stuff boring for the masses.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The primary purpose of ISS is to be a jobs program, not
| scientific experimentation. The Russians are involved
| specifically to keep their engineers from going to work for
| hostile states.
| Kye wrote:
| They're learning all kinds of things by seeing how plants
| grow in microgravity and more recently how 3D printers work
| in the same. It didn't need to cost a trillion dollars for
| that, but now that it's there, we might just get over a
| trillion dollars worth of science out of it.
| avereveard wrote:
| But still, we're to the point where not a state, not a
| government entity, but a rich, bored dude is sending people
| into space as a viable business model
|
| Thinking our space tech is going backwards is severely
| myopic
| himinlomax wrote:
| People have been hiking to the top of mount Everest for a while
| now, but you still can't ask an Uber to take you there.
|
| Because there isn't much worthwhile to do there, the
| interesting thing is going there, not being there. At the
| moment. When/if it can be done for cheap and on the regular,
| there might be stuff to do.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Humans _are_ capable of Mach 3 flight. It 's just a "latent"
| capability. Something we could do but is not currently cost-
| effective.
|
| > The technology that produced those pictures are gone, we
| might be able to take ones like them again, but never with the
| same rockets and never with the same photo-chemical processes.
|
| You can never step in the same river twice, and we are all
| mortal. This is just a statement about the passage of time.
|
| > Progress is fragile, not inevitable and everything we have
| can be lost in a generation just as easily as it was made.
|
| This, on the other hand, is important, and why it's important
| not to let people wreck it by lying about everything.
|
| Worth questioning the "whig view of history" backwards as well;
| a lot of what we call progress had very large costs for certain
| groups of people at the time and made their lives worse. Or got
| them killed.
| astroflask wrote:
| Okay, I came here to talk about how the images are a bit soft
| and a quick, subtle pass of Richardson-Lucy deconvolution
| restores some detail (and enhances the film grain, that's a
| plus for me but some people may find it a bit too much -- it is
| still there in the pictures though).
|
| And then I read your comment and you totally throw me into a
| Wikipedia rabbit hole with the Roman concrete... Speaking of
| which, what do you mean we can't make Roman concrete nowadays?
| Wikipedia even says that there are corporations and
| municipalities looking into it as a viable, environmental-
| friendly, long-lasting alternative to regular concrete[0] !
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete#Modern_use
| pjc50 wrote:
| It's essentially an old meme; the exact details _had_ been
| lost, since the technology was not in continuous use and no
| written record survived, but the footnote on Wikipedia
| details its reconstruction. This great paper: https://pubs.ge
| oscienceworld.org/msa/ammin/article/98/10/166...
|
| Essentially it relied on volcanic ash from specific
| locations, and they forensically traced those locations.
| astroflask wrote:
| Right, that's the impression I got from reading. And it
| looks like we have regained that technology, which is what
| threw me off the remark. Will take a look at that paper,
| however I'm totally a stranger to most geo-something
| sciences, just a regular software engineer here (with quite
| a bit of scientific curiosity though).
| ascar wrote:
| > "I was guided throughout by two principles:
|
| - be true to the photographs
|
| - be true to the Earth
|
| [...]
|
| The main changes I made were:
|
| [...]
|
| - adjusting the black point until the background of space appears
| truly black"
|
| These shots are beautiful, but is making the background
| completely black really doing reality justice? In our
| unfortunately light polluted night sky we can barely see the
| stars, but shouldn't the astronauts see the earth within a
| shimmer of billion stars? Or is the source material not showing
| stars due to a lack of exposure?
| enriquto wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that some images have had the blue color
| enhanced. The oceans look a dullish gray from space, not blue.
| astroflask wrote:
| > In our unfortunately light polluted night sky we can barely
| see the stars, but shouldn't the astronauts see the earth
| within a shimmer of billion stars?
|
| No, you have to be in the night side, or looking into the void
| (no Earth surface visible, definitely not the Sun in sight, not
| any part of your spacecraft being shined upon) for your eyes to
| adjust to the darkness and then you get to see the stars. Being
| near the Moon, I'd add "no moon surface" to that list.
|
| > Or is the source material not showing stars due to a lack of
| exposure?
|
| I'm not sure there... Film behaves differently than image
| sensors. Maybe if we had access to the negatives you could do
| some chemical magic to bring in detail. I don't know how
| hard/destructive that could be on the negatives, as film isn't
| a medium I've ever really used. Grew up in the 90's with a few
| film cameras, but digital took over before I had the chance to
| seriously get into photography and was also far cheaper (so,
| easier to pick up as a hobby for a teenager). Now I'm into
| digital image processing and that's a totally different beast
| on its own.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| A bright moon surface and fully lit Earth hanging in the sky is
| also a sort of "light pollution" for the human eye ;) (at least
| it will cause the pupil to close and let less light through,
| tuning out the dim stars, same effect why there are no stars in
| the moon photos). Of course I haven't been to the moon so far
| and can't really know what the sky actually looks like during
| "moon day" :)
| tubabyte wrote:
| > Collins, who remained in orbit on the Command Module, is behind
| the lens. Every other human is in front of it.
|
| This caption is so powerful.
| enriquto wrote:
| Climb a hill and take a photo of the floor with your telephone.
| If there are no planes/spatial stations nearby, then you'll
| have the same thing.
| willis936 wrote:
| If you have a 179.99 degree wide angle lens.
| enriquto wrote:
| Not sure how does the lens angle change the front/back
| position of the objects around it. But still; cheaper than
| a whole space program ;)
| willis936 wrote:
| I was thinking the meaning of the caption was ray tracing
| light through the lens from a single point on one side. I
| suppose you could stick your head in a fishbowl that is
| sitting on the ground to get the same effect, as long as
| there are no planes or manned spacecraft directly above
| you.
|
| Technically you can do that with a planar lens if you
| stick your eyeball onto the lens.
| yoavm wrote:
| well technically, everyone else would still be in front the
| lens regardless of how wide it is.
| ape4 wrote:
| Good point. Clearly us humans are not spread out enough.
| [deleted]
| Xophmeister wrote:
| I was going to post exactly the same thing. It's such an
| understated way of phrasing it and a really beautiful photo. I
| wonder how Collins felt? There's a quote from him on the page,
| but it's more about the photo rather than himself. Surely
| that's been discussed...
| embedded_hiker wrote:
| Collins wrote a book about his experiences - more of an
| autobiography up to 1974. He talks about this.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_the_Fire
| xwdv wrote:
| If he had taken a selfie it would be a photo with every human
| in front of the lens.
| [deleted]
| runj__ wrote:
| I cried a little at the the shot of the lander and earth from the
| command module, the thought of every single other human in the
| same frame is just too much.
| loudlambda wrote:
| How does this picture make any sense? Europe, Asia, Both
| America's, and Australia all fit on the other half?
|
| https://static1.squarespace.com/static/562652dbe4b05bbfdc596...
| alexjudson wrote:
| Keep in mind that you are not seeing a complete "half" of the
| earth in this picture. As your distance increases, the
| effective horizon encompasses more of the surface. Only at
| infinite distance would you see exactly half of a sphere
| (mathematically speaking).
|
| Try taking a picture of your globe closer and closer to the
| surface and watch as less of the surface is visible in each.
| projectileboy wrote:
| The Pacific Ocean is enormous.
| shawncampbell wrote:
| Yes, they do. Try orienting the globe for yourself here:
|
| https://www.echalk.co.uk/Science/physics/solarSystem/Interac...
| loudlambda wrote:
| You're right! But with my globe at home, and that site you
| listed, at the same angle I can clearly see part of India and
| Australia, it's weird that they don't seem to show up in this
| picture.
| roywiggins wrote:
| If you get closer and widen the lens, you will see an
| arbitrarily small portion of the earth as you approach it.
| abhayhegde wrote:
| Site seems to be down.
| mzz wrote:
| There's so much more art in nature itself than it is art.
|
| By the way, his book "The Precipice" is quite worthwhile to read!
| faebi wrote:
| Beautiful. I would like to buy them as posters. Is it possible to
| buy these somewhere?
| st_goliath wrote:
| In case you are interested in more photographs from the Apollo
| missions, back in 2015, NASA released a whole digitized archive:
|
| https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive/albums
|
| The link is from a hand full at the bottom of the article, where
| it also lists other archive overview pages and leads to ~15k
| scanned photos.
| astroflask wrote:
| From the lengthy blog post under the images, it'd seem he used
| those archives. I have the impression that I've seen these
| pictures as TIF files instead of JPGs somewhere (the Internet
| Archive perhaps?), but I can't remember precisely now. Maybe
| the author used those, as I imagine they'd give a bit more
| leeway and flexibility in a restoration effort.
| sizzzzlerz wrote:
| Missing is the Voyager 1 image looking back to Earth from 4
| billion miles, the one referred to by Carl Sagan as "the pale
| blue dot, a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam". It doesn't have
| the resolution these images have but it's impact on our
| civilization is over-whelming.
| dieortin wrote:
| Would you happen to have a link?
| pomian wrote:
| Here is one: https://www.planetary.org/worlds/pale-blue-dot
| richthedev wrote:
| Here's one https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pale-blue-dot-
| revisited
| timdaub wrote:
| I always wonder what happens to you psychologically when you see
| something like this. As one of the astronauts I mean.
|
| Surely, once you've returned, nothing will be as it used to.
| ernopp wrote:
| I love this quote from Edgar Mitchell (Apollo 14) on seeing
| Earth from the Moon:
|
| You develop an instant global consciousness, a people
| orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the
| world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out
| there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You
| want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag
| him a quarter of a million miles out and say, "Look at that,
| you son of a bitch."
| Leszek wrote:
| It's called the "overview effect":
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect
| squarefoot wrote:
| I can get just a tiny grasp of the power of that sight just
| by looking at the photos, and can't imagine what would be
| like experiencing it in 1st person. This brings the hope that
| one day when every human would be able to experience it,
| we'll create a utopistic Trek-ish reality in which people
| suddenly become less selfish and put the common good above
| idiocies such as nationalism or the pursuit of immense wealth
| at the expense of others. Hopefully one day seeing the Earth
| from orbit will become sort of a rite of passage for kids.
| ernopp wrote:
| I wonder how we could get more people to experience this
| effect... Something like what Stewart Brand did by pushing
| for and publicising the first whole earth picture (in part
| via the Whole Earth Catalog) but more for the internet age.
|
| I was toying with an idea of a site called "Get Some
| Perspective" where you'd start off with a FPS view and as you
| scroll you gradually zoom out, eventually to the whole
| observable universe. You could send this link to people if
| they're being short-sighted, callous, etc and hopefully
| instill a bit of the Overview effect in them...
| quercusa wrote:
| In case you've never seen it, check out the Eames's _Powers
| of Ten_.
| distances wrote:
| I think you're toying with the dangerous Total Perspective
| Vortex [0] as described by Douglas Adams:
|
| _The Vortex is now used as a torture and (in effect)
| killing device on the planet Frogstar B. The prospective
| victim of the TPV is placed within a small chamber wherein
| is displayed a model of the entire universe - together with
| a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot bearing the legend
| "you are here." The sense of perspective thereby conveyed
| destroys the victim's mind; it was stated that the TPV is
| the only known means of crushing a man's soul._
|
| [0] https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Total_Perspective_V
| ortex
| geoduck14 wrote:
| This will crush your soul if you consider you are
| insignificant, but let me help.
|
| The entire universe is ENORMOUS and we are but tiny
| specks. But the same God who made all of that, made us,
| too. And that same God knows us by name and wants to have
| a relationship with us.
|
| Be God's friend.
| bboreham wrote:
| Prior art: the "Total Perspective Vortex" https://hitchhike
| rs.fandom.com/wiki/Total_Perspective_Vortex
| curtainsforus wrote:
| I'm sure it's hyped up to the point that if you went up there,
| expecting a cosmic experience, you'd be disappointed.
| curtainsforus wrote:
| I'm sure it's hyped up to the point that if you went up there,
| expecting a cosmic experience, having imagined and simulated it
| a million times, you'd be disappointed by the reality.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| I'm ready to be disappointed.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I used to think that about the Grand Canyon, then I went.
| Nope, it's just as impressive as they say being there
| experiencing it in person vs looking at all of the
| videos/images available. Seeing an image that required a
| special lens to take it all in looks nice. Standing in the
| same spot the camera was is a completely different experience
| when you have to turn your head left/right to see the same
| thing the image does. Anyone that says different has not
| actually taken the pepsi challenge
| ranguna wrote:
| Beautiful shots.
| ThinkingGuy wrote:
| Amazing article and incredible pictures, but this one line has me
| scratching my head:
|
| _" Only 24 people have journeyed far enough to see the whole
| Earth against the black of space_"
|
| The Apollo missions from 8 through 17, with the exception of
| Apollo 9 (LM test in Earth orbit), all reached lunar orbit, even
| if 8, 10, and 13 didn't actually land. Each carried 3 crew
| members. Doesn't that make 27 people?
| roywiggins wrote:
| Three crew members went twice.
| pmarreck wrote:
| I can't stand SPA's.
|
| I can't link anyone to any specific photo because the URL doesn't
| update when the view does.
|
| Beautiful photos though
| protoman3000 wrote:
| Unbelievable that all life there ever was, is contained on this
| little marble.
| driggs wrote:
| Given the scope of the universe, and aided by the perspective
| of photos like these, many would certainly describe this idea -
| that life has only ever existed and will only ever exist on
| Earth - as "unbelievable".
| petee wrote:
| My first reaction was that this was a set of AI generated photos
| of what earth looked like if we hadn't been developing it, like
| restored to nature.
|
| But I certainly wasn't disappointed. Very beautiful
| temptemptemp111 wrote:
| Haha is that what they're calling it now? "Restored"?
| matsemann wrote:
| I once saw a video (reenactment but original voices maybe?) of
| how one of these images was taken. How the earth appeared over
| the horizon and they scrambled to find a camera or so. Anyone
| knows which video I'm talking about and could help me find it?
|
| Edit: finding out the picture in question had a name, Earthrise,
| made it easier to find. Here's the video
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dE-vOscpiNc
| pimlottc wrote:
| Wow, what a great video, very cool how they combined the
| original photos, mission audio and 3D models of the lunar
| surface. Thanks for the link!
| mattvot wrote:
| Don't just look at the photos. Read the commentary. Adds an extra
| level of awe.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-04-24 23:01 UTC)