Firefly ‘Blue Ghost’ lunar lander touches down on the moon

that's a great point about the lighting... it really does contribute to that distinctive look. i've also read that the lack of atmosphere on the moon sharpens the shadows and increases the contrast, which probably adds to that effect.

Yeah it's the lack of atmospheric scattering.

> 1960s technology

Still photography has gotten more convenient since then, but in the agreeable lighting and atmospheric conditions one would encounter while taking a vacation snap outside at noon Cynthian time, image quality now isn't better than then*

*Unless you're willing to spend $10,000+

Well it's either that or the tin foil hat people will say they just rented the OG soundstage.

Nvidia did a great presentation about the lighting for the original. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syVP6zDZN7I

I am no expert, but to my knowledge the space flight tech evolves very slowly, if at all. One reason for that is that modern tech is supposedly too sensitive to radiation. So you want to balance what's worthwhile to upgrade, and fancy videos are probably low on that list.

Thank you for sharing this!

Flickr has had a resurgence of popularity among photographers since yahoo sold it. It’s easily the best “professional” photo hosting site currently.

This is an interesting tangent. Is it Flickr's copyright rules that make it attractive? Or, something else? Lack of existing competitors? Not associated with a social media account?

My guess: they are the same update rate. The lens flares have blurrier edges and move less across the screen. This makes the jumps less obvious.

CGI animations also add blurring, and even your eyes have an integration time that will make fast moving objects blurry. So your brain good at interpolating blurry edges.

The most 3-D experience that I have had with the moon, on the cheap, is when its not in it's full phase. With a cheap telescope, when you observe the edge of the partial-phase moon's crescent, you see the "terminator." It suddenly feels so different, finally you see the moon's bumpy spherical nature. It's like you are flying just above it.

> The terminator is where you'll see the most pronounced shadows cast by the lunar features like craters, mountains, and valleys. This is because the Sun is at a low angle relative to the lunar surface, emphasizing the topography and allowing you to see craters and other features in sharp relief

Interesting how Luna has more of a Minmus feel in terms of scale, the horizon is so close. Something to do with the wide angle lens I imagine?

Why are the interiors of the craters uniformly deep?

It's now within reach for a medium sized corporation, largely ignored by humankind.

That's huge progress!

Yeah that's true, but I haven't really experienced the Apollo era personally. After the "gap" between the old space race, and the new race inspired by private space agencies, I do feel we are getting closer, to the moon at least.

I think it would be cool, and I don't know that I care if there's a "reason" to do it other than "human achievement".

I mean, there wasn't really a "reason" to go to the moon in the 60's either. I think I more or less agree with JFK on this:

"Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, 'Because it is there'. Well, space is there, and we’re going to climb it"

I could try and find a lot of justifications about medical research or something, and those might be cool, but it would be dishonest if I pitched those as a "reason" to go, because I would want us to return even if those reasons weren't there.

Tell that to the people of deadliest catch and dirty jobs: we have robots now that can do everything we want to without needing to sleep or eat! Sadly, we're not using them because they don't exist yet...

Not that anyone’s offering me the choice of course but I’m happy to leave it to the robots. Lunar dust gives me the creeps.

Imagine stepping outside into a world where absolutely everything is coated in dark gray copy toner that gets ingrained into all that touches it.

I don’t think I could do it due to the anxiety.

Robotics is unfortunately not there yet, unless we plan to send everything there fully assembled with zero maintenance ever. Unless you mean purely for basic exploration.

But if we are to go more interesting places... shouldn't we have down breathing, eating, and sleeping on the moon so well that it isn't much of a cost or a risk? It's inherently a good testing ground for things we need to do reliably much further later.

Imagine if we never built ISS because putting a space station in Earth's orbit was a solved problem...