RED ONE or another RED camera in Space?
 

Do you think RED ONE or another future RED camera has a chance of being blasted into space along with a NASA crew?

Weight is a HUGE priority on shuttle missions. So the smaller the camera the better. I know they did an IMAX in space, which is a huge camera, so I suppose it's possible they might choose RED at some point. But it would really depend on what the project was meant to be. I know that some shuttle astronauts carried small 'palmcorders' into orbit. During the Columbia mission, one of them survived the destruction of the cabin and re-entry... tape enclosed.

So a mini-RED is more likely to be launched?

What is likely to be launched, is a camera that meets whatever the mission goals are. An IMAX if they need to shoot that, a palm sized mini-dv if an astronaut cares to bring it aboard as a personal item. I don't know that RED will become 'the official digital camera of NASA' if that's what you're asking. I know that most of the cams on board the shuttle are just various closed circuit type cameras, suitable for broadcasting mission footage in progress. I don't think RED is really suitable for 'broadcast' purposes. But if NASA was intent on creating high quality content, perhaps for some other purpose, I can't see why it wouldn't be a good camera for that.

On the shuttle, they used to take up the Canon H1 but now they take the G1.
You can also see all the burned pixals from the Sun radiation when they do the live HD transmissions back down to us on HD Net.

Jim Martin
Birns & Sawyer

Well, considering there's no GRAVITY in space, they may as well get the most resolution possible.

Actually there is gravity -- always -- but while free falling in Low Earth Orbit the gravitational effects are so minimal that the environment is referred to as microgravity.

However, as Richard Alvarez pointed out earlier, weight is an enormous concern for shuttle missions, so So the smaller the camera, the better; Richard's point that IMAX has flown before sets a precedent for NASA to send up a relatively large, heavy and bulky system as RED (relative to handycams that is), so it's certainly possible. Hope this helps,

*shudder* Real good reason for anyone to stay planted on earth. And a good way to kill a RED.

Wow, have the H1 been in space, didn't know that! Hmmm... ...don't tell Meryem about this, she has ordered a RED I know. But the H1 was first of them in space... ...maybe she will punish us in the UWOL-team by announcing a SPACE theme, she's already announced the NIGHT...

I've never seen an XL H1 on any of the NASA Flight Day Highlights, but an XH A1 went up recently on STS-120 (see this thread). At any rate, it's hard to say which was the "first of them in space," because Sony and Canon DV and HDV camcorders have been flying on shuttle missions in an official capacity for years, along with privately owned camcorders of all makes and a variety of formats carried up personally by lots of astronauts. It would be difficult to determine which was "first," but if a person wanted to research the first DV camcorder to go to orbit, they'd have to reach back to 1995 or 1996.