#11
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"The Dish"
"Rick DeNatale" wrote in message news On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 15:17:32 +0000, Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote: Yes. Specifically it's a fictionalized account of the activities at the radio dish in Australia that received the first images of Neil on the Moon. For the "historically accurate" account of Parkes observatory's role in Apollo 11 see http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/apollo11/ (and being in Australia explains why the first images of Neil are upside down. :-) Nice joke, but in reality, the initial feed was alternating from the statins in Goldstone California and Honeysuckle Australia, both of which had neglected to correctly set the switch on their scan converters which would flip the image vertically, which was necessary because the camera was mounted upside down in the MESA. The image needed to be flipped again when Armstrong took the camera out and mounted it on a tripod on the lunar surface. The Parkes feed wasn't used until about nine minutes after the TV camera was switched on when it was realized that they had by far the best signal of the three ground stations receiving the transmission. Had Parkes been used from the beginning, we would never have seen the upside down image since they had the inversion switch correctly set. Following the release of The Dish, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) commissioned a great paper defining the reality of the Apollo 11 transmission receptions, On Eagle's Wings http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/apollo11/. All of which goes to prove my thesis that the best thing about historical fiction is that it can garner interest in history (and those who criticise it as a historical document have made a mistake). Martin |
#12
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"The Dish"
David Lesher wrote:
Query: What was the first recovery to have live video from the carrier? Wasn't that Gordo's Mercury flight? The first to have video from the chopper? Dunno - one of the Geminis? David -- per aspera ad astra |
#13
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"The Dish"
Pat Flannery wrote:
It has that very interesting and solid-looking brick building as its base...which looks strange, as if it had been built on something left over from the 1800's...a Martello Tower to house a heavy gun to repel Napoleon's expected invasion of Australia perhaps? A serious concern at the time for a young British colony and yes, fortifications were built to face not only the naughty French, but also later the naughty Russians (this is also in the 19th century, during the war in the Crimea, IIRC). As for Parkes, they'd have to be *really* *big* guns, when you consider just how far inland Parkes is... I think the Parkes base building is brick-chicken-house strong to survive the stresses caused by the sail area of the dish itself. The base structures of the dishes at the CDSCC near Tidbinbilla are also considerably robust. David -- per aspera ad astra |
#14
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"The Dish"
Dave Downing wrote:
In that case Pat, you should try to get your hands on the DVD. There is much more than just the usual "didn't we have a great time shooting this movie" type of cast and crew interviews for the bonus material. Bonues material? My copy has theatrical trailer and cast & crew bios. That's it. Did I get a cheapo version? Is there a Special Extended Directors Edition with Added Scenes and redone special effects? -- Scott Lowther, Engineer Remove the obvious (capitalized) anti-spam gibberish from the reply-to e-mail address |
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