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The millionaire tourists on SpaceX's Moon trip better document the whole thing

The millionaire tourists on SpaceX's Moon trip better document the whole thing

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I am so ready for an 8K HDR Earthrise

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earthrise (nasa)

It’s a shame that we haven’t been to the Moon in more than 40 years, because the photos and videos from those trips gave humans an incredible perspective on existence. The imagery that the Apollo 8 astronauts captured of the Earth “rising” over the Moon showed our planet for what it truly is: just a ball of rock and water that’s suspended in a void.

Now that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has announced that two tourists are paying his company for a new trip around the Moon, all I can think of are all the ways I want these two mystery millionaires to document the trip. I’m not talking reality show style — I just want the raw imagery. Here are just a few ideas rattling around in my head:

  • An 8K HDR version of Earthrise filmed at 120 frames per second
  • A series of 3D, 360-degree videos of the launch and the trip around the Moon
  • Cameras in the windows of the Crew Dragon spaceship that citizens can (briefly) control from Earth. Like with some terrestrial live-streams, you’d queue up and get, say, 15 or 20 seconds where you and you alone could point the camera at whatever part of the Moon your heart desires
  • Time lapses of the entire trip
  • Photos of the landing sites and artifacts (Hi, hoaxers)
  • Some film images of the Moon and Earth, for old times’ sake. Maybe even a few Polaroids. For once, film processing fees would feel downright cheap by comparison.

Who knows how possible any of these would be, or whether SpaceX would be willing to accommodate such requests? The company is very into producing stylish videos of its own efforts, so I’d imagine they’d want control over what gets captured on this mission. But if Elon Musk can shoot for the Moon, so can I. I just hope that, between now and the end of 2018, someone makes sure the two space tourists know how to use a camera.