watched this with teary eyes. it truly shows what we can do when we come together and challenge ourselves for the greater good of humanity.
(That being said, I can't believe they cut to people on the ground during SRB separation!)
edit: here's better footage from Everyday Astronaut: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOsSRRBMNoc&t=24512s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaJklsJonD4
The main broadcast is still up, with the ten minute countdown starting around 5 hours and 27 minutes into it:
On your parenthetical point, I also agree: some really weird camera selections, and frustrating dropouts, during the crucial moments of the launch.
Nevertheless, a real triumph, and I particularly enjoyed the "full send" remark from (I think) the commander. I also really enjoy the fact that the livestream is relatively light on commentary and that most of what you hear is from mission control and the crew.
I also loved the shot of stage separation, but they cut away from that way too soon also!
As someone who has watched launches before, it is so much better when the broadcasters keep it mostly together, and know when to be silent for periods of time. He does not know how to do that.
Imagine what we could accomplish if we didn't suck.
okay what is more useful is a matter of opinion. you can disagree, but I stand by it
Maybe, but at what cost? What are we not getting/doing because we are doing this instead? This is of course an unanswerable question, but it is the correct response here - you are getting so focused on what this might gain that you forget that other things also have gains. Time is not unlimited, people who are working on space could work on something different instead, but they cannot do both.
Most of what people find inspiring doesn't directly provide a lot of objective utility, and is often quite dangerous for the individuals who choose to participate. Reaching the highest peaks in the last century, antarctic expeditions, pushing the limits of racing vehicles, attempting a sub two hour marathon, and athletes defining new tricks and styles in extreme sports are all objectively pretty useless in terms of their direct outputs -- and yet I find it all a whole lot more inspiring than my computer getting twice as fast, even if the latter is of way more objective utility to my life.
Min-maxing ROI in a spreadsheet just doesn't do it for me in the same way. There's absolutely a place for that and in a world of limited resources it should be how we spend most of our effort, and it is! The amount of money spent on efforts like this is _tiny_ at the scale of nations, and is certainly a much smaller and better use of funds than wars and corruption.
What an odd thing to bring up out of nowhere.