Moon landing set: grid ref

Last crawled date: 10 months, 2 weeks ago

If the Apollo moon landing missions were staged, this is probably the basic layout of the set. The position of the lander is an approximation. The stage would be dressed with fine, oily, colored sand, mixed with more granular oily sand and rocks, and dispersed very accurately to the actual geology of the area as deduced from satellite data. The shell (i.e. hemispherical backdrop) would have images shot using a very detailed and accurate model of the landscape, and specific to the general location of the astronauts and TV camera for photographic accuracy. The set is extremely large - about 300 meter diameter - so the projected photographs would have to be swapped with another set of photos accurate to the new position on the set if the astronauts and camera moved a significant distance. That is as simple as turning one set of calibrated projectors off while turning another set of calibrated projectors on. The set lighting is designed to simulate the sun - both for lighting the set and for photographic accuracy. This would be a complex array of high-powered lights, flagged to prevent multiple lights spilling into the camera lens, and to provide overlapped spread on the ground to hide the uneven lighting in the complex lunar ground. The astronauts are dangling from wires invisible to the cameras, and counter-weighted with about half the astronaut’s weight. This combined with slow-motion photography accurately simulates the rate of descent in the lunar gravity environment. Challenge: Phase 1: Create an uneven stage surface (e.g. rocks and craters) with a simple lunar ground texture, and add a matching backdrop texture on the shell. Phase 2: Make swappable location-specific backdrop images for specific locations on the set. Phase 3: Mock up a wire rig above the stage for the astronauts.