This Sunday was the second part of When We Left Earth, Discovery Channel’s three part series covering NASA’s first 50 years. While the part one documented the agency’s shaky beginnings up to the Gemini missions (1958 to 1966), part two really focused on the Apollo lunar flights. Once again, they did an excellent job covering in depth all steps leading up to the flights from the Apollo 1 fire, Apollo 10′s dress rehearsal, Apollo 11′s lunar landing, Apollo 13′s struggles to the end of the program with Apollo 17′s final visit to the moon. They wrap up part two with the launch of Skylab – NASA’s project to gauge the effects of extended weightlessness on the human body.
I must say again that the folks at The Discovery Channel did a wonderful job combining HD converted footage with interviews to tell the history of NASA as if you were there for the ride. The third and final part of this documentary is scheduled to air Sunday, June 22 at 9pm. They will cover the recent history of the agency, with a focus on the Space Shuttle program. But, if you can’t wait until then, or would like to watch more video, be sure to check out NASA Video Vault.
Firefox 3 World Record Download Day 2008
Mozilla is trying to set a world record for the most downloaded software in 24 hours with its new Firefox 3 release. That official download day is today, Tuesday, June 17th, 2008… conveniently also the launch date for the browser. As of this post, over 1.7 million users have pledged to download the new Firefox 3 browser, but I’m sure most of them are waiting for the “download now” email.
If the Mozilla/Firefox management team is smart (which I assume they are), they will use the country information entered by pledgees as a guide to email out the download tokens by timezone and number of people in that region who have pledged to download. At least that way it will stagger the downloads and save some hope for their servers.