CC.CLYDE@UTEXAS-20@sri-unix (12/16/82)
From: Clyde Hoover <CC.CLYDE at UTEXAS-20> NASA has always festooned manned space vechiles with cameras to record almost anything of interest. The entire launch complex is covered with TV cameras, every catwalk and blast pit. Some of the more spectacular pictures of the Apollo program came from those cameras. My favorites were the one UNDER the main engines, so you could watch those beasts fire up (and disintegrate the camera) and at the base of the mobile launcher (watching those HUGE hold down arms snap back). The launch vechiles were outfitted with special film cameras to record important events. These cameras are then released (in this case, soon after the first stage seperation). Since the Saturn V was only about 20-30 miles up (past most of the atmosphere), but far short of orbital velocity, the cameras splashed into the Eastern Atlantic and floated there waiting to be recovered. On the last shuttle flight, one of the networks showed a brief NASA film clip of the external tank seperation taken by a camera in the orbiter (from a previous flight). That camera stayed with Columbia and was removed after the orbiter's return to Earth. -------