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The Kitschy Film About Our First Man Made Moon (It Was a Mylar Balloon Satellite)

The documentary starts with the feel of a _Twilight Zone_ episode, and doesn't veer far. Which makes total sense, given just how science fiction its subject is. Or was. "If it works, it will be the first time voice has traveled from the Earth, up...

The documentary starts with the feel of a Twilight Zone episode, and doesn’t veer far. Which makes total sense, given just how science fiction its subject is. Or was.

“If it works, it will be the first time voice has traveled from the Earth, up to a man-made moon, and back to earth again,” intones a passionate narrator. He’s talking about Echo, NASA’s first communications satellite, a passive spacecraft balloon created by an engineer at the Langley Research Center. Made of Mylar, the satellite measured 100 feet in diameter. Once in orbit, residual air inside the balloon expanded, and the balloon began its task of reflecting radio transmissions from one ground station back to another. Echo 1 satellites, like this one, generated a lot of interest because they could be seen with the naked eye from the ground as they passed overhead.

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Because undersea cables, which already supported three million messages across the Atlantic a year, would someday have to deal with 21 million messages, the satellite – launched 50 years ago this week – became crucial. “We would like to see live television programs,” explains the narrator with no small sense of urgency, “history in the making from all over the world.”

Contributing to the film’s sci-fi tone: Bell Labs hired Jerry Fairbanks, the legendary b-movie domino, to helm it. Credit is due to him for the schmaltzy music, the clunky acting, and the film’s wide-eyed vision of the future. “In this super cold world,” the narrator says at one point, explaining the method for amplifying messages, “the Mazer’s ruby crystal helps keep the telephone conversation clear and easy to hear.” Later, the narrator speculates about a far away future of geosynchronous satellites – a future that came only a few years later.

The Future!

When NASA launched Echo II in 1964, some called it the most beautiful object ever launched into space. It was a 135-foot diameter inflatable sphere of aluminum-coated Mylar that functioned as a passive reflective communications satellite. Like its predecessor, it was visible to the naked eye. But unlike its predecessor, it was also visible as it was inflating: the Echo II launch vehicle contained both film and video cameras.

For a moment, you may wonder if the filmmakers or scientists involved had any inkling that five decades later the film would be streaming over an Internet connection from thousands of miles away, or that rather than three, there would be three hundred geostationary satellites competing to lob our communications around the Earth. It’s intriguing, and irrepressibly quaint.

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But by the end, with the soothing sound of President Eisenthower’s first message, the promises of “outer space,” and the melody of “America the Beautiful,” you may also feel like you’ve been launched out of the atmosphere and into a gentler, brighter and older version of the future.

(Update: see MOS’s passing tribute to Echo at this year’s Venice Biennial.)

Image:

NASA

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