4 ms·

Only a handful of minutes from a position in space where you can see the whole earth to a small spot in the desert of Utah. Where you see the feet of a human wa

Only a handful of minutes from a position in space where you can see the whole earth to a small spot in the desert of Utah. Where you see the feet of a human walking towards you. Amazing what is achievable with the tech of today. Space is not that far away after all. Still very odd to see the two scenes described above in a short video on YouTube. Having the human walk towards the camera has a tremendous effect. It's something everyone can relate to and it puts a great context to all the scenes that are shown in the video before that.

mastazi 3y ago
Just a heads up that the video linked above has been cut, the full length video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWxl921rMgM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWxl921rMgM What you said is still valid though, since the full video is not much longer.
- enderfusion 3y ago
  Yeah sorry, grabbed the wrong link initially.
whats_a_quasar 3y ago
If you live in San Francisco you're closer to LEO than you are to Los Angeles. Probably also helps that 17,000 mph is really freaking fast.
elasker 3y ago
Yea, that's something we have to explain to folks quite a bit working at/on Varda; space feels further away than it really is because of how inaccessible it has historically been; really due to cost, but also cadence of launch in near equal measures. Now that both of those barriers have fallen with the Falcon 9, and will continue to do so with Starship, that perception of inaccessibility will slowly change...or I hope it does/I'm working really hard (with some decent progress) to make that true.
EnigmaFlare 3y ago
You can't see the whole earth (most of one hemisphere) from LEO, only a circle about 1000 km in diameter, which is about the size of Texas or twice the width of Utah. That doesn't stop it being amazing though! There's also a cut before the person appears, so it could have sat waiting much longer than a few minutes.

mastazi 3y ago

Just a heads up that the video linked above has been cut, the full length video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWxl921rMgM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWxl921rMgM What you said is still valid though, since the full video is not much longer.

enderfusion 3y ago
Yeah sorry, grabbed the wrong link initially.

whats_a_quasar 3y ago

If you live in San Francisco you're closer to LEO than you are to Los Angeles. Probably also helps that 17,000 mph is really freaking fast.

elasker 3y ago

Yea, that's something we have to explain to folks quite a bit working at/on Varda; space feels further away than it really is because of how inaccessible it has historically been; really due to cost, but also cadence of launch in near equal measures. Now that both of those barriers have fallen with the Falcon 9, and will continue to do so with Starship, that perception of inaccessibility will slowly change...or I hope it does/I'm working really hard (with some decent progress) to make that true.

EnigmaFlare 3y ago

You can't see the whole earth (most of one hemisphere) from LEO, only a circle about 1000 km in diameter, which is about the size of Texas or twice the width of Utah. That doesn't stop it being amazing though! There's also a cut before the person appears, so it could have sat waiting much longer than a few minutes.