• merc@sh.itjust.works
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    17 hours ago

    I heard an interview with a filmmaker who went over what TV / film technology was capable of in the 1960s.

    In the 1940s rockets existed, the V2 rockets Germany launched at Britain weren’t quite orbital rockets or moon rockets, but the basics were there.

    On the other hand, by the1960s, TV technology was pretty primitive. The only “storage” they had for TV signals was a device that could store maybe 30 seconds of video footage. That was used for instant replays in sports. Some shows were shot on film and then transferred to TV, but it was always obvious when it was done that way because film has limitations. There’s dust, hairs, scratches, grain, etc. that get on the film and get projected on the TV. You also have to change rolls of film pretty often. But, with the lunar landing they had only one camera, so it was one continuous shot for much longer than you could do with the film technology of the time.

    Sure, this is NASA, so maybe instead of figuring out the technology necessary to go to space, the geniuses there were instead focused exclusively on how to advance video and film technology to decades beyond what was known in the 1960s just so they could fake a moon landing. And, not only did the moon landing not leak, none of this A/V technology leaked either. Given that rockets and guidance systems already existed in the 1940s, isn’t it more likely that they just advanced that stuff by a couple of decades and used it to land people on the moon?