Favorite Video

Lately (as in since about last Friday) I've been in a somewhat curatorial mood and I keep asking myself what music, videos, images or whatever I would put in a time capsule. What it is, really, is a more cultured and refined way of "picking my favorite shit", but it amounts to the same thing.

Above is a still from my favorite video of all time, footage from the launch of Apollo 6. I could cite all sorts of gosh-wow statistics and dredge up no end of cultural BS to defend this as my favorite video of all time, but I don't have to. It's how watching the video makes me feel that makes it import. It amazes me to this day that we, mere human beings, pulled this off, that we could master such incredible forces and bend them to our will and, at least for a while, be masters of the universe. This one video captures everything that I think is good about America, and none of what is bad. And it's also indescribably beautiful.

Here's a link to three excellent videos:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8114761251072204210

The first video shows the jettisoning of the Saturn first stage, known to its friends as the S-IC. A great many things are going on at the same time. First, a set of retro-rockets are pulling the spent stage away from the rest of the booster. Meantime, another set of solid-fuel ullage rockets are settling the propellants in the tanks of the second stage, to which the camera is attached. Also, the five J-2 engines in the second stage are going through their start sequence. You can briefly see a ghostly exhaust plume around the engines as they start, but once they're up and running, their exhaust is completely transparent, though you can sometimes see it wash over the jettisoned first stage.

The second video happens more or less immediately after the first video clip, and shows the interstage ring falling away. This was a structural ring that separated the first and second stages, and which incidentally included the second-stage ullage rockets. Once the second stage's J-2 engines are running, there's no need to keep it, so the IU triggers some explosive bolts and the ring falls away. Bear in mind that the ring is 33 feet in diameter and 11 feet tall, and it clears the nozzles of the J-2s with only a bare minimum of room to spare. Also watch for the ring to take a furious scorching as it impinges on the exhaust plume of the J-2 engines - they don't look like they're running, but they are. You can get a feel for how hard the booster is accelerating by watching how fast the interstage ring falls away - it's moving out indeed. This is all happening at an altitude of about 240,000 feet, and somewhere under the vague black smudge of the S-IC's smoke trail lies Florida.

The third video is from the top of the second stage looking forward, when the third stage and the attached Apollo spacecraft separates. Look for three large plumes radiating outward from the base of the third stage. These are the exhaust plumes of the three ullage rockets that are involved in the start sequence of the single J-2 in the third stage. After a few seconds there is a wash of white vapor, then the J-2 engine starts and the exhaust becomes invisible. What looks like a single blue-white light is actually a view straight up the throat of the running J-2.

So there it is. My vote for the greatest video of all time.

Thanks for your time.