Unearthing NASA's Earliest Time-Lapse Flyover Videos

Flying, spinning, falling. Repeat. Going to space in the early days seems even less like some graceful parting ways with gravity and atmosphere than in launch/orbit footage we see now. It looks more like riding an old rickety roller coaster, but the one you ride in Hell that just keeps going and going and going. Poor Ham the chimpanzee, subject to 15 minutes of absolute confusion and terror, and then more confusion and a bit more terror (on Project Mercury’s MR-2 mission). And then, suddenly, the ocean. Anyhow, tip of the hat to Vimeo time-lapse enthusiast Joan who dug these up and edited them together into the above.

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