It's impossible not to be inspired by this.
'An idea born in unsettled times becomes a feat of engineering excellence.
The most complex machine ever built to bring humans to and from space and eventually construct the next stop on the road to space exploration.'
(Thanks to @adityaanupkumar for the link)
This is the most awe-inducing, ineffably brilliant film I have seen for a long time. This has been a 'Year of Space' for me (one of the best books I read all year was Voyager: Seeking Newer Worlds in the Third Great Age of Discovery).
This film is a detailed exploration of the moment The Shuttle (or, more precisely, the STS) takes off, mostly displayed in ultra HD 400fps slow motion film, taken from the dozens of mostly 16mm cameras that surround the Shuttle launch site to monitor the lift-off. The narration throughout describes exactly what we're seeing and why it's happening.
It's both beautiful and somewhat overwhelmingly intense, at the same time (you forget you're watching 400fps too easily). I remember seeing the first Shuttle take off on grainy colour TV, a week after my ninth birthday (I think we had just finished watching some pirated VHS videos on my neighbour's VHS player, which was a novelty in itself). I still think it's a shame it ended up taking cargo to the Space Station versus building a launch platform for something more ambitious, like a manned trip to Mars). Anyway . . .
Here's some more detail from the YouTube page:
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Photographic documentation of a Space Shuttle launch plays a critical role in the engineering analysis and evaluation process that takes place during each and every mission. Motion and Still images enable Shuttle engineers to visually identify off-nominal events and conditions requiring corrective action to ensure mission safety and success. This imagery also provides highly inspirational and educational insight to those outside the NASA family.This compilation of film and video presents the best of the best ground-based Shuttle motion imagery from STS-114, STS-117, and STS-124 missions. Rendered in the highest definition possible, this production is a tribute to the dozens of men and women of the Shuttle imaging team and the 30yrs of achievement of the Space Shuttle Program.The video was produced by Matt Melis at the Glenn Research Center.
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