alt Hacker NewsHopefully, the footage is better than the missed pan up at lift-off, and showing spectators at the time of booster separation.
I understand funding cuts and all, but this is a once-in-a-generation moment and it’s filmed with no apparent effort whatsoever.
Replies
The camera and simulation footage were a bit of a letdown and something SpaceX does much better. On the other hand NASA launches do evoke a feeling of substance over form where science takes precedence over presentation. For that money however I concur - I expected more. Especially the simulation footage where the lack of brightness made it hard to see the vehicle - they might as well have used KSP for it
Artemis has a budget of over 90 billion dollars, it's more than 4 billion for that Artemis II launch (as estimated by NASA, possibly more because they don't even know exactly how much they're spending). For that price one might reasonably expect a couple of quality cameras for the public to be able to view what their money was spent on. For comparison, a SpaceX ISS resupply mission costs NASA ~$150 million. While that's a very different rocket and mission, that still doesn't account for a 26x higher price!
NASA had their budget cut, but when you look more into it a lot of that never went into spaceflight to begin with.
They had 4000 people cut in 2025 and big budget cut in 2026.
Maybe that included the camera crews and equipment.
My first thought is SpaceX and Elon would have done this so much better.
I felt I watching the launch through someone's iPhone.
I’ve read elsewhere that the cut-away during booster separation was intentional given the high risk manoeuvre.
If something went wrong / explosion etc, then they wouldn’t want to broadcast it.
Something to that effect. I’m paraphrasing someone else.
It’s not rocket science, it’s media production/direction.
> missed pan up at lift-off
Tilt up. Pan is from side-to-side, and the word comes from "panorama".
if you haven't seen the footage from someone in a passenger jet nearby, it rocks
https://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1sagcc1
https://v.redd.it/l11tehzzvrsg1/CMAF_720.mp4
Think about how much technology evolved to create that scene, to fly nearby and being used to take that video, wow
Minimum effort has always been NASA's approach to online streaming tbf, 720p potato quality cameras with lots of mission control static shots. I think SpaceX were the first ones to provide anything at full HD with relevant stuff being shown at all times.
Crazy that a dude from Iowa and his ragtag group of rocket watchers does a better job with launch coverage than NASA. I can't believe they cut away during booster separation. Absolute shit show.
They missed it pulling off the pad, they then had a picture of the plume, the wide shot off the pad was quite a bit too late also, then they missed the separation of the boosters and the upper stage separation.
Honestly it looks like they intentionally missed every high risk procedure intentionally and cut back a few seconds after it had succeeded.You don't make this many mistakes one after the other accidentally, its easier to do this right than wrong, cutting to the crowd as booster separation occurs was clearly intentional. I take this as NASA had very little confidence in this launch and was avoiding showing all the moments it could go wrong live.