reprage

Phew… this is going to take some unpacking. Space Program 4 is a colossal mouthful. No. That’s not right, maybe it’s more like a mindful? Whatever it is, I’m having difficulty working out where to even start. What’s the first bite I take to digest this experience?

My earliest and most visceral recollection of the livestream is when Commander Smith was about to descend from the LEM to the surface of Vesta. At the top of the ladder, she reached to her left and deployed a swing arm camera. She then continued down towards Vesta, and as she approached the bottom of the ladder, the view from mission control switched over.

The shot captured by that swing arm camera is a perfect recreation of Neil Armstrong’s televised first steps onto the Luna surface. It was one of those little ‘whoah’ moments that made me stop and think. And for me, that’s one of the most appealing things about Tom’s sculpture – as I work my way through it, bite by bite, I stop and think about things I had never considered before. Like, how exactly did the other NASA televise those first few steps on the moon?

If you missed the full livestream, you can still catch some great sequences over at @tomsachs (look under IGTV).

A photo of the swing arm camera deployed on Tom Sachs Lunar excursion module
A close up photo of the swing arm camera deployed on Tom Sachs Lunar excursion module
A screen capture of the space program 4 live stream, showing the view from the swing arm camera.

Photo: Morten Nisker Toppenberg

Originally written for the Sachsian Syndicate.

Previously: TGIM 31 - There is no way we can get to Hamburg to be at Space Program Four in person. But we can borrow a leaf from the JPL playbook and use social media as a rover to explore Deichtorhallen in Hamburg.

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