Spacecraft Films: Space Shuttle: First Flights Production

While we have several products in production at the present time (Apollo 11: To the Moon, The Cape, and Space Shuttles: First Flights), the Space Shuttle: First Flights set represents a massive undertaking, being a 6 DVD set and covering the development of the Space Shuttle and the first four test flights.

In addition to our usual practice of being packed with footage from the missions and the development, this set is our first HD project, and the documentary (probably 2 hours) will be in HD.

In order to cover the subject in the proper way, we felt it was important to show the history of the development and conception of the reusable space shuttle, from as far back as the skip-glide concepts of the Sanger Silverbird through Dynasoar, from von Braun's Shuttle through the contractor phase A, B, C and D proposals and more. In order to make them fly we're using CGI to create significant portions of the flights of these vehicles-that-never-were.

We'll post some progress reports on the set over the production of the set. For now we can present a few glimpses into the flight of the Dynasoar. From launch through orbital operations to reentry and landing, we'll look at many of these proposals and the effect they had on the final configuration of the Space Shuttle. These stills are from the new HD animation we're doing for the set, showing the proposals as they would have looked... had they ever flown. (They are reduced to 400 pixels wide, from their normal 1920)