PBS Nova: Terror in Space (1998) (opens in new tab)

(pbs.org)

36 pointsopengrass28d ago10 comments

10 comments

There's a roughly contemporary book "Dragonfly: NASA and the Crisis Aboard Mir" by Bryan Burrough that I recall being somewhat controversial when it came out but also very carefully reported. I do recommend it still.

chasil24d ago

Was Skylab any better?

"Skylab's orbit eventually decayed and it disintegrated in the atmosphere on July 11, 1979, scattering debris across the Indian Ocean and Western Australia."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylab

wat1000024d ago

That had nothing to do with Skylab itself. It was caused by NASA’s lack of space flight capability in that time period due to Shuttle delays.

xattt24d ago

Interesting to note the short time scale between NASA missions: Apollo 17 was in December 1972, and Skylab was first occupied in May 1973.

Sharlin24d ago

Skylab was literally a modified Apollo mission, the only part of the Apollo Applications Program that ended up actually implemented. As you may know, the Apollo 18–20 flights ended up cancelled, and any plans for continuation flights involving longer (initially 14-day) stays on the surface and an eventual lunar base were scrapped.

exogeny24d ago

Simple, functional design. Obviously not...quite the intended use of the HTML table elements, but ah well, that era was fun. Tables and image maps and transparent GIFs!

xattt24d ago

No, no, no. Having to navigate back to look at the next section of relatively short text (i.e. browsing through the MIR modules) was a painful gimmick. It broke your flow and was generally annoying.

An image map at the top with paragraphs for each section below, and an in-line text link back to the image map would have sufficed. People were still figuring this stuff out at the time.

danvk24d ago

Is the video episode for this up somewhere? It can be hard to find old PBS shows, even from just a few years ago.

haunter24d ago

https://archive.org/details/TerrorinSpace

> It can be hard to find old PBS shows, even from just a few years ago

Torrent. Pretty much all seasons are available

1 more reply

signorovitch24d ago

Amazing that this is still up, and that so many of the links still work. Great find!

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

10 comments

troutwine24d ago

chasil24d ago

Was Skylab any better?

"Skylab's orbit eventually decayed and it disintegrated in the atmosphere on July 11, 1979, scattering debris across the Indian Ocean and Western Australia."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylab

wat1000024d ago

That had nothing to do with Skylab itself. It was caused by NASA’s lack of space flight capability in that time period due to Shuttle delays.

xattt24d ago

Interesting to note the short time scale between NASA missions: Apollo 17 was in December 1972, and Skylab was first occupied in May 1973.

Sharlin24d ago

exogeny24d ago

Simple, functional design. Obviously not...quite the intended use of the HTML table elements, but ah well, that era was fun. Tables and image maps and transparent GIFs!

xattt24d ago

No, no, no. Having to navigate back to look at the next section of relatively short text (i.e. browsing through the MIR modules) was a painful gimmick. It broke your flow and was generally annoying.

An image map at the top with paragraphs for each section below, and an in-line text link back to the image map would have sufficed. People were still figuring this stuff out at the time.

danvk24d ago

Is the video episode for this up somewhere? It can be hard to find old PBS shows, even from just a few years ago.

haunter24d ago

https://archive.org/details/TerrorinSpace

> It can be hard to find old PBS shows, even from just a few years ago

Torrent. Pretty much all seasons are available

1 more reply

signorovitch24d ago

Amazing that this is still up, and that so many of the links still work. Great find!

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse