It has been a week for space.
First, there was the launching of the top secret military space shuttle last week — the X37. Read about it in the newspaper. This being 2010, it was off to youtube to see if someone had posted a video of the top secret mission. Sure enough, there were several videos. The best one was this one — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKKgmqxjCM8&playnext_from=TL&videos=MxBGdRr9dM0 .
Best part is when the rocket unloads its payload — the X37 itself — how they cut to illustrations. As all top-secret youtube videos should do.
And I love this coverage of it — how at the very end of the video — last 20 seconds — when this former leader of the Star Wars program, now retired and living in Florida — he mentions god at the end and the news lady immediately cuts him off:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGuy_rZGrzE
The X37 is the latest progenitor of the X15, and it is ironic because in this house my 4-year-old has been playing with a toy X15 (part of the Space Voyagers toy series — http://www.thespacestore.com/spacvoyevofs.html – highly recommended), and we’d gone to youtube to find out what it was all about — the best video of it being this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jtjg1YN7iso
And this past week was also the week of the NASA space balloon screwup, which looks like something that would happen in my backyard:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eab9h-n2yVk
And we’ve been watching a lot of Star Trek original series on Hulu — all of the High Definition rework done on the space scenes has put the old series way, way over the top. It’s vibrant techicolor-like colors have held well to begin with — and they did such a great job with colors and futuristic looks on the series to begin with. Star Trek original series with Bill Shatner and crew, now with reworked graphics — is one of the great accomplishments of mankind. Check out the space shuttle coming into the Enterprise in the first three minutes of this episode:
I’d forgotten Hulu is feeding in CBS video and I was actually watching cbs.com last night!