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NASA: The Sagan Series

Rill22

Rill22

Senior member
Wouldn't be surprised if I was late to the game on these, but I searched for NASA and Sagan and came up with nothing.

I thought these short videos were great, especially the first one, and it looks like parts three and four are in the works. Some cool space footage, earth footage, all put to Carl Sagan's words.

Part One

Part Two

Really worth a watch.
 
I watched the Cosmos series when it first aired, and I even taped them. The series was extremely good. I am not sure where those tapes are now, I think our oldest daughter has them, but I am not sure. I have not seen them for awhile. Doesn't really matter though, they were recorded in the SLP mode and the video quality is not all that great. I think you can buy the entire series on DVD which would be much better than watching old tapes.
 
JimW1949 said:
I watched the Cosmos series when it first aired, and I even taped them. The series was extremely good. I am not sure where those tapes are now, I think our oldest daughter has them, but I am not sure. I have not seen them for awhile. Doesn't really matter though, they were recorded in the SLP mode and the video quality is not all that great. I think you can buy the entire series on DVD which would be much better than watching old tapes.
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If you have Netflix, they are available on streaming. So it's kind of like you own them and have access to them whenever you want.

these also have the 10 year updates from Sagan after some of the episodes, where he clears up some of the then outdated information.
 
ViviTheMage said:
He's cool, but why the obsession over him? (reading the comments).
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he's one of those people that was way ahead of his time. As far as scientists go, a true Renaissance man--a cosmologist/astronomer first, but he was very comfortable within theoretical physics, biology, chemistry, biochemistry, engineering, geophysics, it just goes on and on.

More importantly, though, he was a truly gifted teacher. He could make you feel as if you were just as brilliant after listening to him for only 5 minutes. Extremely passionate about his work, about the universe, about life and the human condition. He both respected who we are, the planet, and at the same time feared the things that we were capable of doing.

He is probably the best ambassador for science that has lived up until this time, primarily because the layman could listen to him and simply have no hope of rejecting him. The guy was amazing.
 
zinfamous said:
he's one of those people that was way ahead of his time. As far as scientists go, a true Renaissance man--a cosmologist/astronomer first, but he was very comfortable within theoretical physics, biology, chemistry, biochemistry, engineering, geophysics, it just goes on and on.
Click to expand...

This. Sagan knew something about almost everything, and he was able to communicate far better than the average astronomer or physicist could.

It's probably the same reason that Story Musgrave is held in such awe by NASA fanboys. Becoming an astronaut is impressive on its own, but he was also a physician, highly experienced jet pilot, had done hundreds of experimental parachute jumps, had a crazy number of degrees and to top it all of was a fascinating speaker to listen to.
 
ViviTheMage said:
He's cool, but why the obsession over him? (reading the comments).
Click to expand...

He was a likable guy. As mentioned he was very passionate about space science, and he made it contagious. He had the ability to break down a complex subject the average person could understand.

And this was in the 70's, documentaries were visually very dull without computer graphics like we have now.
 
His accent/enunciation was odd, yet very eloquent.

A little bit of Humanity died when he died. 🙁 Thankfully he lived in an Age where he could be Recorded and enjoyed by future generations.
 
There are now several well spoken scientist type people that are very good at doing what Sagan pioneered.
Michio Kaku, Neil deGrasse Tyson are two notables.
 
JeffreyLebowski said:
There are now several well spoken scientist type people that are very good at doing what Sagan pioneered.
Michio Kaku, Neil deGrasse Tyson are two notables.
Click to expand...

those guys are good, but I haven't witnessed them utilizing the scientific breadth that Sagan commanded. They tend to stick to astrophysics--Sagan went all the way through molecular genetics, and into architecture, art, philosophy. Dude had a firm command of everything, and he seemed to believe that all disciplines were equally relevant, equally powerful, all essential to understanding life and existence. He even championed the few values that are attained through religion, and wasn't the foolish dickhead that we see with Dawkins.
 
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